<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>burn after opening by glimmerFae (harmicist)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28528344">burn after opening</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/harmicist/pseuds/glimmerFae'>glimmerFae (harmicist)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Overwatch (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Canon-Typical Violence, Double Agents, Fall of Overwatch, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, It's reyes' death, M/M, Moira O'Deorain is Loyal to Gabriel Reyes (her work), Pining, Suicidal Thoughts, Talon Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Talon Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Temporary Character Death, they loved each other!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:49:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,440</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28528344</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/harmicist/pseuds/glimmerFae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The best-kept secrets are the ones that destroy themselves.  </p><p>A different take on what happened at Zurich.</p><p>("He did this to me, Ana," Taken to its most extreme conclusion- Double (triple) agent Gabriel Reyes vs Double Agent Jack Morrison.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy 2021!  At this point I'm just going to throw this out into the void bc I've been working on it for months!  Please enjoy it, if you do, let me know with a comment, or hit me up @harmicist on twitter.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>2070 was shaping up to be Overwatch’s worst year on record.  That really was saying something, considering that 2 years ago, in 2068 Blackwatch had been exposed, 2 major bases had been bombed, they’d been banned in 35 countries, Liao died.   The slipstream experiment fucking exploded, they’d all originally thought it’d taken the young pilot with it and their young (so, so young) anti-terrorist lead operative had been assassinated after no less than 20 failed attempts. </p><p>Taken the wife with him.  Except not.</p><p>He and Moira had been recruited into Talon by necessity that same year, for Christ’s sake.   His illness had almost taken him out, Moira desperately scraping at the bottom of her Blackwatch funds to get them tickets to Monaco.  Once he’d recovered, he figured he’d be able to use Talon against themselves.  He hoped.</p><p>The next year hadn’t been any better.  McCree had been grievously injured after he’d gone to London illegally, which led to Overwatch going to London illegally.   There’d been the whole mess in Egypt.   The Japanese government started raising investigations into Overwatch because of their work against the Shimada, who’d of course had sway with the government.  Spies had started to pop up just about everywhere.  Him and Jack had started arguing, and hadn’t stopped.</p><p>So it said a lot that Gabriel thought 2070 was Overwatch’s worst year on record. Genji had defected to Overwatch, and then left altogether.  Reinhardt was forced into retirement.  Torbjörn had quit. </p><p>Ana died.</p><p>That fact echoes around himself like he is an empty void; fit to be filled with something else.  One of his two best friends.  Killed in action, her body left out there.</p><p>He’d sent McCree, sent Jesse, his very best, and he’d turned up empty and angry and she was still gone. </p><p>And then Jesse had left too.  Vanished in the night. </p><p>Genji was gone not long after that. </p><p>It really feels like he and Jack were alone at the tips of two mountains, the base of which was being carved out by ravines, eroding their stability over time, and inevitably, something was going to happen and force them both to come crashing down.</p><p>XXXXXX </p><p>It comes as a surprise to even him, when it comes. </p><p>He is sitting in his mostly defunct office in Zurich, holding a photo of Jack, Ana and himself, the three of them feigning seriousness for the shot, knowing that if the press had found them laughing in it, it wouldn’t have looked good on the new organization they worked for. </p><p>Gabriel misses Ana, of course he does.  The woman had worked with him and for him for 20 years.  He misses her dry humor, misses her caring nature. He has no doubt in his mind that, if she were here, she could solve this chasm between him and Jack.  But it wasn’t just her face he was looking at.  </p><p>Jack is staring straight up at him, almost accusingly.  This had been one of the last times he’d been Jack’s superior officer, and things had spiraled further and further out of his control over the years, in spite of Gabriel’s best efforts.</p><p>Gabriel knows what he’s doing, he tells the angry ghost in the picture. </p><p> </p><p>He’s doing what he can to keep you safe.  </p><p>Can’t you see that, Jack?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The room rumbles, and other pictures in the room topple over, glass shattering around him as he gripped the desk for support.</p><p>A lifetime in California baked into his bones tells his brain this is an earthquake. Weird, but not out of the question, considering the base’s positioned in the Alps.  He expects this will be front page news, come the morning, and there was likely already coverage of, if not the base itself, than any of the places nearby that are impacted by this. </p><p>“Commander Reyes!” One of his employees, a younger girl, working as data entry for Overwatch’s intelligence department that neatly covered what remained of Blackwatch, approaches him, and she seems harried. </p><p>He feels guilty, that in that moment, he didn’t know her name.  She coughs, alarmed.  “Sir, I need to escort you out of here.”</p><p>Again, a harsh pang courses through him.  “Kid, its okay.”  He assures, pocketing the picture in his jacket. “I can get myself out just fine.  Is there anyone else left on this floor?”  He knows, theoretically, there should be, but the lower levels of Zurich were a maze. </p><p>“There was,” Her voice lowers. “Several other Blackwatch employees had a meeting 10 minutes ago.” She shifts, nervous.  “They called a meeting 5 floors up.  I think its just you and me down here, I can do another sweep?”</p><p>Something more icy than fear goes through him at her words.  Gabriel swallows, keeping his cool as he thinks through the reality.</p><p>“They didn’t know you were here, did they?”  He confirms, and she nods. </p><p>“I was just down here to gather stuff from storage.”</p><p>And a small girl scurrying into storage wasn’t an unusual sight, and she would have been gone before they started their plans, he thinks to themselves.  “Listen to me,” He says, voice calm, but firm.  “You need to get to the nearest ground floor exit.”  He holds her shoulders.  “Don’t use the elevator.  Use the storage staircase, and avoid the common areas.”  He hands her an old style key, one he knew none of his agents would have. </p><p>They weren’t his agents anymore, he realizes, the pit in his stomach growing as years of infestation seems to have finally done the damage to the house that termites could, and the foundations creaked ominously.</p><p>“An attack?”  Brown eyes are wide, as she seems to put two and two together.</p><p>“I don’t know yet.”  He shakes his head.  “I’m going to find that out though.  Just get out alive.  Earthquakes are just as dangerous.  Leave your stuff here, keep moving, and stay away from glass and large objects.”  He sternly warned, and the young girl got moving, not quite running yet as she hurried back to the janitorial staircase, using her old style key to unlock it and get inside.</p><p>He can hear screams, both far away and much closer, as the base shakes with all of them inside, Gabriel’s various screens cracking on the wall, the lights behind them glowing like broken neon and sending ominous chills down his spine.</p><p>Steadier on his feet than most of the residents here, and further bolstered by his military training and the SEP, and his experience in buildings under attack both during the crisis, and once Talon had begun destroying what Overwatch had built keeping him so.</p><p>“Jesse,” His voice cracks into the comm, “I’m on my way up from office level.  I need help getting bodies out, <em> now </em>, report.”</p><p>Static answers him, and he closes his eyes as he recalls the truth. Panic is already making him forget he was alone here.    He swallows as he grips it tighter in his hands.</p><p>That he’s alone to do this…isn’t the worst thing.  He turns to smoke, and he’s able to move faster.</p><p>He’d look at this exclusively as a positive, and ignore the gaping hole in his side.  No Ana, no Jesse, no Liao, no Torb, no Reinhardt.  Just him and Jack, and Jack wasn’t anywhere near here.  In an ideal world, Jack is already out of the building, having evacuated first.  But this isn’t an ideal world, and Jack, stubborn man that he was, would have gone further in to help the injured.</p><p>Gabriel stops smoking forward, pauses, long and hard as he reforms.</p><p>On the floor, crumpled, is another employee. Baker, data analyst.  His eyes are stuck wide, unseeing, the bullet exit hole in the side of his head making it clear he’d been running and had been shot on his escape attempt.</p><p>This isn’t an earthquake; he knows that now, for sure.   Gabriel keeps moving, leaving bodies behind after checking that they were dead, their weight heavy on him.</p><p>The fifth level up, that 2nd sublevel, was a massacre.  Bodies were strewn about, and he finally saw what he knew in his gut. </p><p>The talon symbol, left behind on a fallen combatants weapon. He closed his eyes, and cursed. “Commander!”  A voice rang out, and a bloody woman, one of his field operatives, Thompson, ran up to him.  There seemed to be a gaggle of people with her, mostly the other paper pushers who worked in the subterranean parts of the Zurich base.  Many had been crying, from the looks of it, holding weapons for what might have been the first time, hands shaking.  “We’ve been locked in from this side.”  She revealed, spitting venom.  “Fucking turncoats, they weren’t expecting us to put up a fight.”  She hit one fist into her palm and rubbed it in, angrily.</p><p>Another operative, Russo, cheerily waved at him from the door, the crowbar wedged in firmly, but obviously not making any progress.  “They also broke the only device we had to open it the fun way.”  They gave a half hearted smile, obviously attempting to remain cheerful in spite of the dire situation.  The base shook again, and the gaggle of employees shuddered in a wave of panic. </p><p>“I can handle that.”  He said, knowing his changes from Moira made this easier.  He turned to smoke, ignoring the way his employees gasped and both Russo and Thompson tensed.</p><p>He reappeared on the other side, and discovered the reason for the block. “It’s been barricaded.” He announced, pulling things out of the door’s handles, untying ropes, shooting through one particularly bad knot, before he was able to kick the door in. </p><p>Russo had helpfully picked up one of the limping secretaries, and nodded at Reyes, their jaw set, and Thompson couldn’t quite meet his eyes, shock registering through her. </p><p>“Agents.”  He addresses quickly.  “Avoid common areas, avoid crowds.  Thompson, you know the quickest way out.  Take point.  I’ll start clearing out things down here.</p><p>“Don’t die on me Reyes,” Russo says pointedly, “I will <em> not </em> be the one to have to tell McCree.”</p><p>“You should get moving.”  He reminds the agent, who huffs, shaking their head, and then moves to follow the crowd that was following the flashing red emergency lights, “Keep your wits about you.  I’ll keep looking for pockets like yours.”  He called out to inform them, knowing he wouldn’t hear back a response.</p><p>He could already smell the smoke.  They’d be lucky to make it to ground level before things were cut off down here. </p><p>In a rush, then, he moves through the final subterranean levels, becoming part of the smoke itself.</p><p>He looks up to the ceiling as he made it to ground level, the screams and gunfire and fire all in motion around him.  It’s a horrible sense of déjà vu, watching the crisis in action again.  It hadn’t even been 30 years, barely one generation removed.</p><p>And yet, how quickly it comes back to him, his guns heavy in his hands.</p><p>“Gabe.”  A voice crackles over his comm, and his alarm grows, as he knows it intimately well.  “My floor is trapped.  We can’t get down." </p><p>Like hell that was going to stand.  With a curse, he takes to the stairs, and begins climbing through the rubble, the walls collapsing around him as a round of a lot louder screams start, the shudder of another explosion sending the base to <em> shift, </em> metal screeching as it is tested.</p><p>He grips tight to the railing of the staircase, as his red eyes are wide, stairs breaking as the walls bent inwards, the stone groaning its anguish. </p><p>The base’s connection to the mountain itself had been compromised.  The place shuddered, before it seemed to hold a little longer.  People would still be able to get out, but the time was truly ticking down now, it seemed. </p><p>The base had shifted lightly that time, but who knows what would happen if it truly started to collapse?  Gabriel does, but he doesn’t want to imagine it right now.  It’s one step at a time, but two or three of the broken ones as he races up the stairs.</p><p>“You okay up there pretty boy?”  He calls hoarsely into the comm, but only static meets his eats.  “Jack?” He calls again, only to hear nothing.  It’s not that he needs directions, he knows Jack’s floor layout by heart.  </p><p>It’s just that, if Jack had been crushed by the ceiling falling in, god help whoever would get Gabriel’s wrath.  Such a mundane death wasn’t meant for Morrison. </p><p>He composes his entire physical form as he reaches the strike commander’s floor, and braces himself.  There was bound to be a lot of broken glass in the halls, and he wishes that he could travel as a wraith.  But Jack wouldn’t react well to that revelation.  Not now. </p><p> </p><p><em> The way his agents had tensed. </em> </p><p>
  <em> They knew what their commander was.  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p><b> <em>Reaper</em> </b>. </p><p>Jesse hadn’t known, but whether or not that was because he didn’t put the pieces together or he’d simply not wanted to see, well.  Gabriel hadn’t known, and now, he supposed, he wouldn’t ever know. </p><p>Jesse’s gone. He had to do this alone.  He <em> could </em>.  He would. </p><p>He breathes out the last of his dark smoke, willing his body to remain whole, hoping every last horrible treatment Moira had put him through would keep him together for Jack’s sake, if not his own.</p><p>It’s never been for his own sake.  Always for the others.  This was his duty, he was the real leader.  Jack had always said something to that effect.  He was the captain of this ship, even if it wasn’t in name.  He was the one who directed them to this end.  He’d make sure things went right as they could, so that the crew could live to speak of it. </p><p>Gabriel steps out, broken glass being pushed out of the way of the stairwells door.  </p><p>“Morrison?”  He calls into the hall, nervous, something wrong with the air itself.  “…Jack?”  He tilts his head, listens, but cannot hear anything over the sounds of the building’s destruction.  He lets the door go, ensuring it would remain open if he needed to make a quick escape, using rubble to keep it pressed into the wall, and tarts moving, stepping quickly over broken glass, dust and rock. </p><p>“Where are you?” He says to himself, concerned.</p><p>“Right here, Gabe.”  It’s Jack’s voice, but it’s <em> wrong </em>.</p><p>He barely finishes the thought before he’s knocked flat on his chest down the hall, Jack having kicked him squarely in the back.  Glass was sticking into him, but he ignored the pain for the moment, shaking himself off in a practiced gesture, the smoke he was so close to able to get rid of those minor wounds quickly.  He rolls over just before Jack pounced, and catches his fists with his hands. </p><p>“Morrison, what the hell?”  He asks, the breath having been knocked out of him, the sound raspy.</p><p>Jack’s blue eyes, the ones he saw even in dreams, were cold, frosty like the world outside.  He’s seen that expression before, and the shock that runs through him is enough to cause him to not be prepared for the next blow, as Jack hit his mark, socking Gabe straight on the cheek.</p><p>The pain makes his body move faster than his brain, and he wraiths out from under Jack, eyes turning a bright bloody red.  His mind was tangled up, acting like a scratched record, unable to make sense of this even as his body fought Jack like he’d done a million times before on a sparring mat. </p><p><em> “C’mon Gabe, think you can beat me this time?” </em>   <em> Jack had teased, always having the edge when it came to hand to hand combat.  At least he did in terms of strength and speed.  If Gabriel had been allowed to use the full breadth of his powers, it’d be a fairer fight, he was sure. </em></p><p>Gabriel has to beat him; there is no other option.  He mentally takes off his gloves, and knows that if he wants to live, wants to get Jack out of here, he’s going to have to sacrifice more of himself. </p><p>“What the hell, Morrison?”  He finds his mouth asking again, but Jack says <em> nothing </em>.  There is absolutely nothing behind his eyes.  No light, no fire; simply cold, bored calculation.</p><p>“Is this about Ana?”  He tries, searching for any emotional cord to strike, to see something in Jack’s eyes.  “<em> Jesse </em>?  Venice?  Hell, the paparazzi?  Reinhardt’s benching?” </p><p>He says <em> nothing </em> as he strides toward Gabriel, fast and efficient, like a cold machine, and punches him again, Gabriel not fast enough to stop the blow from coming, but quick enough to turn to smoke to get out of the way.</p><p>
  <em> He and Jack were the best of their team, a commander and his right hand man, and when Gabriel had been tapped for Overwatch, he’d have been a fool to leave Jack behind. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He’d promised him, they’d get through this together. </em>
</p><p>They still would, Gabriel reaffirms as he reforms on his feet.</p><p>“We need to get out of here.”  He said, commandingly, as though filling his old boots would somehow make Jack snap out of it.  “Jack, we need to <em> go </em>, now.”</p><p>“We need to go down with our ship, Reyes.”  Jack says firmly, eyes dark, beyond Gabe’s reach.  “It’s what the world needs.” </p><p>He tightens his fists, before he throws himself back into their match, urging himself to find some sort of hole in Jack’s defense, and yet, finding nothing.   He curses himself, wondering where the hole had been, that this had happened. When would Talon have had the time to do this?   Who could have done this?</p><p>This wasn’t Jack.  Jack wouldn’t do this.  He has to hold onto that.  This <em> wasn’t </em> Jack.</p><p>If he tells himself that enough, he thinks sarcastically after being knocked flat out, his ears ringing, maybe these would start to hurt less.  </p><p>He rolls upright, and mentally shakes himself down.  He couldn’t do this if he was just sparring Jack.  He has to win, at all costs.  Jack will forgive him later.  For now, they have to live.  </p><p>The next time Jack lunges at him, Gabriel turns to smoke, and appears to Jack’s side, cutting down on him with a desperate motion, and finally, finally, Jack is downed, made breathless by being knocked onto his chest into glass on the floor.  </p><p>His victory is cut short, though, when there’s a loud series of booms from above them, and base groans around them.  Jack, wisely stays limp as the walls crumple, and the building begins a short free fall, before it stops, throwing everything around them into chaos, glass flying out of the empty windows into the chasm below. </p><p>Jack catches himself in the frame; eyes turned a dark blue by the darkness, and Gabriel reforms on the new floor- the old wall.</p><p>Jack is back on his feet in seconds, walking over to Gabriel with a dark certainty in his expression.  “Always trying to cook up a scheme.  But it won’t work with me.  I know your every move.  Always have, always will.”  He growls, lowly.  “I was wondering if I was going to have to go to you downstairs.  But I played dead, knowing I’d get you where you needed to be.  Now here you are.”  He lifts his pulse rifle up, the business end aimed straight for Gabriel.  “This is how it has to be, Gabriel.  Someone has to do this.  I have to do this.”</p><p>“No,” He refuses, the scratch in his mental record unable to reconcile this at all.  Unwilling to believe what was in front of his eyes, “No, you <em> don’t </em>, Jack, I,” Jack doesn’t let him finish speaking, and shoots him in the gut. </p><p>The pain hits him in stages, and Gabriel gasps, turning to smoke as he <em> ran </em>, desperately, searching for a way out.</p><p>If it’s Gabriel he wants, then Gabriel will use that to his advantage.  Get them out of this precarious position with the open widows and the ravine far, far below. </p><p>He enters the strike commanders office, the room that should have been his, and Jack appears behind him, a looming phantom in the dark.  The walls have been cracked, and everything is tilted.  The place seems hellbent on falling apart, and taking both of them with it.  Jack tilts his head at Gabriel, expectantly, and Gabriel lunges right back into it, his gut burning with the shot, nanites screaming to be replenished with energy to fix it.</p><p>They fight through crumbling rooms, Gabriel occasionally smoking away to get further from the ravine below, and Jack always following, cold, his strides efficient and yet, without any sort of urgency or want. </p><p>This is as rote as brushing his teeth, something mundane and not requiring his full attention.   This fight is <em> boring </em> to Jack.</p><p>No, not Jack.  This wasn’t Jack.  </p><p>The fight had been somewhat even before the gunshot.  It isn’t any longer, not with Jack holding the gun and Gabriel refusing to manifest his. </p><p>The two of them manage to get all the way into one of the main parts of the base, the open space littered in bodies and in flame and rubble.  The great windows above have cracked and their glass glitters on the floor, fire dancing off them, their empty frames crushed in by the mountainside.</p><p>It was there he saw it.  His agent’s work, his traitorous agent’s work, coming home to roost. </p><p>A bomb. Counting down.  “Jesse,” His voice breaks into the comm, needing the member most trained with bombs.  “I need…” He trails off, as he adjusts, remembers. </p><p>Jesse’s gone.  He has to do this alone.  He grips the comm so tightly it breaks in his hand, just as his relationship with Jesse had gone.  Just like his relationship with his family.  He was trying his best, but he only ever seemed to be able to break things.</p><p>Jack’s shadow appears behind him, illuminated by fire.</p><p>Gabriel braces himself as Jack catches up again, unable to hold his smoke form for this long.</p><p>Jack grabs ahold of his hoodie, bloodied and torn open, and throws him into the fire, Gabriel screaming loudly as he rolled out of the flames, his body already breaking down, red eyes wide as Jack leaps over the fire, intent on following him until his destruction.</p><p>His body wraiths, and he can feel it feeding off the burning corpses around him, but it’s not enough, it’s <em> not enough </em>.</p><p>Jack waits for his body to reform, and then punches him again, battering Gabriel, the older man working through how to fix this, how <em> to fix this, how to stop this </em>.</p><p>
  <em> "You know, Gabe,” Jack had joked, late one night.  “You don’t have to be prepared for everything.”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “If I’m not, and it’s the one thing I’m not prepared for,” He shook his head.  “You don’t understand Jack. It’s part of being a leader.” </em>
</p><p><em> “Is going grey before you’re 40 also part of being a leader?” </em> </p><p>“Asshole,” Gabriel whispers to himself, the memory close to his chest. </p><p>He kicks Jack off him, his legs stronger than Jack’s by a bit, as Jack had been built for limberness there, with a powerful upper body, and makes his way back to his feet, refusing to take this lying down. </p><p>They’re on the clock, and Gabriel has to get Jack to come to his senses somehow.  He stops playing aggressive, and starts running again, relying more and more on his augmentations, watching as his skin mottled and greyed, refusing to think about how he looked.</p><p>Moira could fix him, he just has to survive this.  He just has to get him and Jack out before it blows up with them in it.  The base’s layout has changed, and each hallway seems unfamiliar, made so by the fact the base was caving in, was being bombed from overhead, likely.  This final blast would be the final blow, and Zurich would be gone.</p><p>The main entrance is toast, he can see that, and so he’ll need to find somewhere with a wall that isn’t facing the chasm below.</p><p>Best chance to survive would be there.</p><p>His and Jack’s fights are interspersed between rooms.  A handful of blows here, fruitless gunfire there.  Jack surprisingly abandons his pulse rifle to be more limber as Gabriel’s smoke more effectively traverses the fiery ruins of their home.</p><p>But there’s a limit to Gabriel’s powers.  His head busy counting down as best he could; he’d failed to hear Jack finally catch him for good.  All this running, all his plans, it’d all been for nothing.</p><p>Gabriel is slammed into the wall, and then the floor, and the world spins around him, blood trailing beneath him, body feebly feeding on death all around him. </p><p>It isn’t enough, and his body craves for him to feed on the one before him.  He refuses that instinct entirely, but Jack does not.  He beats Gabriel, and Gabriel is too weak, concerning himself with trying to count the seconds down, mind racing for a solution, any solution.</p><p> </p><p>There isn’t one.</p><p> </p><p>Jack stands up, his sidearm drawn, and Gabriel doesn’t get up, arms trying to move, but he finds he cannot muster the energy at the moment.</p><p>It’s there, down in the dark of a collapsing base, now lost in miles of rubble and glass, that Jack, standing over Gabriel, now seems content with his work.  He holds his sidearm in his hand, aims it at Gabriel.</p><p>Gabriel’s breath rattles with the blood in his chest, eyes fighting to stay open underneath bruises and battling the smoke around them, the fire’s heat licking them.</p><p>Did they have 3 minutes?  4?  Less? It was hard to tell. He’d lost count, and moments stretched out impossibly long when he felt himself dying.</p><p>Dull blue eyes turn the gun around on himself.  Aims it right between the eyes.  “Jack,” Gabriel wheezes, forcing himself to shift upwards towards the other man like a plant growing towards the sun, becoming more and more twisted as it bent with the crumbling world around it.</p><p>The gunshot in his gut burning brightly as his nanomachines fed off the death all around him, burns red hot tugging at him from where Jack had thrown him into open flames, the man always having been the more physically enhanced of the two.</p><p>“Jack.”  He says, struggling back to his hands and knees, red eyes burning like the fires all around them. “<em> No </em> .  You can’t let them win.  This is what Talon wants.  For us both to die here.  You can’t <em> do </em> this.”</p><p>Jack flinches, barely perceptible, but there.  Blue eyes staring at the gun, his expression wavering only slightly.  “It’s what the world wants.”  He says, in that same, horribly detached voice he’d heard out of Amélie, during interviews, so detached; <em> he should have done more. </em> </p><p>Was this what Gérard felt?  In his last moments?  Dying beneath the pillow, his wife and only love above him?</p><p>The first man he’d ever loved gently rubs his finger against the trigger, the way Gabe had rubbed his ring to his ex wife and the way that he and Jack had occasionally met their fingers together in the middle of the night with too many words to say and not enough time, never enough time.</p><p> </p><p>He should have done more.</p><p>He <em> can </em> do more.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gabriel could not keep silent to maintain the shaky peace they’d always had before, not in the face of all this, not with a gun in Jack Morrison’s face.</p><p>He leaps from the ground, his body smoke and fire and burns and injuries, claws at Jack’s face, snatching at the gun.</p><p>The gun goes off and the bullet lands in the concrete next to Jack, now on the floor, the man staring up at Gabriel instead, two long cuts in his face from Gabriel’s razor sharp talons reaching and grabbing the gun out of his hand.</p><p>Gabriel’s ears ring the same way they had after Rome, red eyes meeting blue.  Jacks lips move, but Gabriel cannot hear what it is he’s saying. He can’t imagine Jack can hear much of anything either, the crumbling base an echo chamber, a void now, the gunshot having taken their hearing.</p><p>He returns to the ground, spent, talons out and coated thickly in Jack’s blood.</p><p>Blood drips from Jack’s face, the man’s eyes coming back to life, seeming just on the cusp of some great revelation, blood and burns and bruises and broken bones spread unevenly between them.</p><p>The fact that Jack is still standing and Gabriel is not, should say something, but it’s not enough, not something Jack would think about until much later, if he ever did.  It wasn’t Jack’s forte to consider those things. </p><p>Gabriel can feel the rumbling now, from beneath him, all around him, from behind.  The death rattles of everything he and Jack had ever built together seeming to alarm Jack, the man getting to his feet, staggering as he inevitably felt the injuries Gabriel had given him to their fullest extent.</p><p>Anger warps Jack’s face as the man obviously finds a common thread in his mind, a story to concoct, but it is bright and <em> alive </em> and Gabriel feels such a twisted form of relief watching Jack storm towards him with real purpose, and gets in his face, the words lost to them both, empty air, wasted breath, smoke and rubble starting to surround them. </p><p>Gabriel manifests the Reaper mask, and pulls it off his face, knowing he wouldn’t be needing it.  It clatters to the floor, its owner unable to hold on with his burnt and beaten hands.</p><p>Jack picks up the mask, his Reaper mask, and gestures towards it with betrayal and alarm, as though Jack hadn’t been equally compromised, Gabriel could have read his lips but either blocked it out or he was too injured to think clearly or he just refused to and he didn’t know which option really was the truth.  He didn’t know what the truth was anymore.  Gabriel touches the mask, shakes his head firmly, and Jack seems shocked as Gabriel winces, and gently presses it to Jack’s own face, not willing to lose the man now to something as ordinary as smoke inhalation.</p><p>It’s in this empty void without sound, in the moments before death, that he finally finds it within him to speak, knowing the words would be swallowed up.</p><p>“I love you, Jack.”  He says, the motions of his lips as clear as he could make them and with all the energy in him he kicks Jack back from him, closing his eyes as he feels the explosion burning away all the nasty truth away completely until he can no longer feel, his own screams lost to that same void.</p><p>The flames consume him, Jack having wrecked him fully; having taken every last piece of Gabriel there was for the man to give.  The rest was left to be scavenged, picked over by whoever next had the silly idea that they could save the world.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And whatever happens next is lost, just like Gabriel.  Just like what happened to them there.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And yet Gabriel wakes up in agony, alone, in the grave that is Zurich, lost in the darkness.  His breathing is its own death rattle, his screams turning his voice hoarse, until he’s silent.</p><p>Moira is talented in her field, Gabriel never had denied that, had sought her out exactly because of that, but she is no medical doctor.  Her administration of painkillers is done sparingly, since she isn’t trained in it, and no one is around to help. </p><p>Neither of them are people for apologies.  Both of them are used to bearing pain.</p><p>This is more than Gabriel has ever had to, though.  He’d been dead; his fight had been over.  In the back of his pain and terror addled mind, he knows, though, this <em> would </em> be what he had want her to do.  His family is still out there, now reeling in the aftermath of his death. </p><p>O’Deorain may have stolen him his heroes death, but a million other people had done so before her interference in the matter.  She’d been the one person he’d asked to interfere, to defile him for the sake of his preservation.  So she interferes and keeps pulling Gabriel back to this side of life so that he could keep going.</p><p> </p><p>But it hurts.</p><p>It hurts, and that is all he knows.  He can’t remember what brought him here anymore. </p><p>Time drips by like blood in the base.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is pain.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is anger.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is sorrow.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It crystalizes in him as regret, but Gabriel Reyes isn’t one to be kept down.  He isn’t one for apologies, he isn’t one for regret. </p><p>He’s a man of decisive action.  It’s often imperfect, but that's the world they lived in. Imperfect and messy, that was all they had.  That’s just life.  Stolen kisses and longing glances and the occasional touch of hands together.</p><p>Golden hair turning silver, blue eyes meeting his own in a tender moment, electricity that moves through them but circumstance always keeping their mouths closed.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Jack. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s moved from Zurich after a month of treatment.  He’s functional after 3.</p><p>Functional is carrying a lot of that sentence for O’Deorain and himself.  He can walk again.  He finds himself wishing he’d sympathized more with Shimada beforehand.  He can finally speak, having screamed himself hoarse.  He is exhausted and worn down by pain, by what few drugs he was allowed to take with O’Deorain’s treatment schedule. </p><p><em> Like chemotherapy and immunotherapy, </em> She said, quietly, <em> the cure is often as harrowing as the disease, if not more so.  </em></p><p>And that was <em> before </em> she’d wrestled his mangled corpse out from rubble. </p><p>It’s the only thing that holds a candle to the pain and agony of the SEP. At least this time, he doesn’t have front row seats to watching others cough their own lungs up, not metaphorically.  The actual pain and suffering he is in is more like a bonfire to the old candle, but he is alive.   In a sense.</p><p>It’s hard to be grateful to be alive when he is a live wire, his entire body on fire.</p><p> </p><p>He asks the first chance he’s able.</p><p>“What happened, Moira?” He rasps, his voice foreign to himself, wrapped in bandages to help his burns heal, scar over completely, alter the flesh and warp the memory beyond recognition.</p><p>Moira is sitting at her table, her equipment scattered about the room, her gaze avoiding Gabriel’s.  “Talon attempted to kill us, or, really, you.”  She said, matter-of-factly.  “I was, of course, off base.  Getting the necessary equipment for your treatment.  I got the sensation something was wrong from the main town, and when I attempted to reach you…” She trails off, long fingers playing on the edge of paper.</p><p>“Talon tried to kill us?”  He rasps, confused.  “We’re their aces in the hole.”</p><p>“Do you remember what happened with Jack Morrison?”  She asks, thoughtful, and Gabriel shakes his head.  “As you know, we…share things.  Moments, thoughts sometimes.  Feelings, often.”  She looks up at the ceiling, uncharacteristically pensive, as though potentially concerned for his emotions, now of all times.</p><p>“So you remember.”  Gabriel confirms, and Moira nods.</p><p>Finally her gaze meets his own, and he finds himself frozen as her blue eye, emotionless, cuts into him like ice.  It felt like a gunshot to the chest, just like when she’d told him that he was dying, years ago.</p><p>Something dark and almost tragic plays on the edge of his vision, and Gabriel either cannot remember due to his death, or he refuses it, because he doesn’t want to know.</p><p>“I think, perhaps, if you’ve forgotten, it might be best to let it go.”  She suggests, casually, “If the memories themselves are gone, hearing it from an outsider would only change it, significance will be lost, and replaced with things I noticed that you wouldn’t have cared about.”</p><p>“Stop avoiding the question.”  Reyes growls, and Moira sighs.</p><p>“Forgive me, for not wanting to play into our capricious master’s hands.”  She murmurs.  “It hasn’t escaped me that if you’re on the chopping block, I am as well.”</p><p>“I… Talon didn’t do this, otherwise they’d be all over the news right now.”  Gabriel resolutely refuses.  “So tell me who did.  Someone shot me.”  There was a gunshot.  He remembers gunfire, remembers being deafened.  “Who fired the bullet?”  He needs to know the name, needs to have direction, because the fire that was his pain was consuming every last piece of his flesh, destroying him completely. </p><p>He needs something for his claws to hold onto otherwise he will slip into smoke and vanish forever. </p><p>Moira sighs, closes her eyes. “Jack Morrison shot you, after the two of you began fighting, shortly after the first bombs went off.”</p><p>It rips through him like a shockwave, like the gunshot to the gut, sitting with him.  “Jack?”  He asks, horrified. Moira nods again, standing to her full height.</p><p>“And then you stopped him from shooting himself.”  Moira recounts, focused on the memory of her vicarious vampirism. “And shoved him back from the blast.”</p><p>“He did this to me?”  He asks again, mind a broken record, pain latching onto the echo of cold fire.  “Jack…left me there to die, to suffer.”  His claws hover over his wound, the memory scarred into his very skin.</p><p>Jack had taken his love with him.  Death had carved the rest out of his chest.</p><p>“Talon did this.” Moira denies, quietly.  “I don’t know how, but that was your final thought.”</p><p>“No, you said it yourself.  Jack shot me, and tried to kill himself.  <em> Overwatch </em> did this to me, to us.”  Gabriel says, stronger.   “I was blinded by grief for Jack.”  The pieces line up so much easier, and after everything, he wants so badly for them to fit together like a puzzle. “Like you said, Moira, you only filter things second hand.”  It soothes him, to have answers, to have someone to blame.  “My thoughts are liable to be misinterpreted.  Talon putting stress on Overwatch did this to him, and Jack did this to me.  <em> He </em> did this to me, <em> they </em> left me there!”</p><p>“Talon put the bombs there.”  Moira said, tapping her long fingernails on the table.</p><p>“But I could have escaped that.”  He denies, angry.  “I could have, <em> I would have, </em>had I not been compromised.”  The word itches at the edges of his fraying mind.  He denies it.  He must deny it or he won’t know how to move forward. </p><p>“Well.”  Moira says, folding her arms to prevent her fidgeting.  “Morrison might have survived this yet.  But I haven’t heard anything as to that.  They had funerals for you both some time ago. Your coffin is buried in your family’s cemetery, and Jack’ coffin is in Arlington.”  She explains, quiet.  “Talon has presumed you survived.  They offered me a spot for you on their council.”</p><p>He nods; smoke rolling off him in waves as he mentally settles on this course of action, the ashes of what was now since gone.  “I figured.  They have all that data on me.  They should have known that I’d survive.”</p><p>“What’s your decision, Gabriel?”  She asks.</p><p>“I’m going to get my revenge,” He growls, the truth lost, like him, to the fire, burnt away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So some final notes, I guess.</p><p>Jack survives, the explosion having made him HOH, thus giving him a nice pad of protection from being triggered again.  Gabriel can't remember what happened either, or maybe it's that he won't remember.  Jack is absolutely obsessed with tracking down and killing Gabriel as a leftover from this, and Gabriel later turns Jack's words on him when they meet again in Cairo.</p><p>Lemme know your thoughts, good or bad!  I really do hope you liked it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A soldier's war is never over.</p><p>Not when he's not finished his mission.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You were the best of all of us, Jack.” This last lonely relic of the man he knew smiles then, brown eyes having gone a warm wine red, staring at the camera, affection warming his expression. “I’m so sorry that…it’s come to this. Just. Know, that no matter what I say to you…or, hell. Whatever I <em>said</em> to you, seeing as you’re probably seeing this after my death,” He laughs, and he hears O’Deorain in the background, telling him that was over her dead body.</p><p>“No matter what I said out of anger,” Reyes says, picking back up. “It’s not- that’s not the truth. The truth is, you <em>were</em> the right person for the job. I told them that myself. You were the one we needed. I was the one who failed. And I’m so sorry, for not being able to fix it this final time. I’m sorry, that I failed you; that I failed everyone. I hope you can finish the job.”</p><p>Jack grits his teeth, as he turns the mask over and over again in his hands.</p><p>He makes this pilgrimage every year, and every year, he’d come back and watch the same video.  </p><p>He doesn’t know why he does this, not really. The only thing he remembers of Zurich is coming too after some initial explosion, trapped in an upside down office room with Gabriel staring at him in his Reaper mask, Jack’s blood on his metal talons.</p><p>They’d both been bloody, beaten, and yet, when Jack had gotten into his face to scream at him, there’d been no sound at all, nothing. His hearing hadn’t ever been the same, not after Zurich, but Gabriel had been stoic, burnt and beaten. He’d pressed the mask into Jack’s face and kicked him away from the wall, into the frozen night, to his almost certain doom. And a cruel death at that. Freezing, after he’d almost broken his legs on the fall.</p><p>But Jack was tenacious, stubborn. He survived that night, and has survived every night since. But he always comes back here, to watch a video from a traitor.</p><p>He doesn’t know why he comes back here.</p><p>And yet plays it again. Gabriel’s face resets into a stern expression, brown eyes hard, tired. He sighs, to the camera. “Jack, I assume if you’re watching this, then everything went to shit, and I’m not there to explain it to you anymore…”</p><p>He turns the mask over in his hands again, looking at the latest news report about another attack from the Reaper, and grinds his teeth, sending pain into his jaw.</p><p>“There’s so much I never told you about. I don’t know where to start.”</p><p>Jack wants Gabriel dead. He wants to reach through the screen and end him. Wants to go back in time and make sure he actually died back in Zurich, they’d die together, but that was how it had to be. How it could have been. Two old soldiers who’d finally fought their last; that was what should have happened.</p><p>“I guess I should begin by telling you, everything I did, I did for you. It wasn’t enough, because I’m not enough. I wasn’t enough before the SEP, and now the SEP is killing me, Jack. I can almost guarantee it’s what got me in the end. I hired Moira to prolong my life as long as she could.”</p><p>Instead, he is here, watching a liar talk to a fool, just as he had every year.</p><p>He grips the mask so tight it cracks in his hands.</p><p>“When I die, if she can’t pull off some horrific miracle and bring me back,” He jokes, and Moira scoffed from the background. “I want you to bring that research to my ex-wife.” He stares directly at Jack, pleading with him. “My daughter inherited it.   I want to make sure she has the best chance at life I can give her. And I know I didn’t give her much of one.” Gabriel shakes his head. “The past’s in the past, though. I already told Martha that you’re the executor of my will, so there shouldn’t be a problem.” He rubs his neck awkwardly. “She might have a few things to say about me. Believe them or don’t. If I’m gone, I want you to be happy.” The camera feed breaks, having obviously been tampered with; a fact that boils Jack’s blood. Someone else had been here, and had destroyed the one piece of evidence Gabriel had left him.</p><p>Gabriel’s face looks tired, incredibly tired.</p><p>“I just…it’s all so much. I know you don’t have to believe me. I don’t know if I’d believe me.” He shakes his head again. “It’s a lot to take in. I understand. I just…I want to tell you one thing.”</p><p>Jack swallows, tensing. “You were the best of all of us, Jack.” Gabriel tells him, and Jack turns off the recording, breaking the mask entirely, leaving it behind him.</p><p>He’s done wallowing in that. He knows Gabriel’s out there. He will finish this.</p><p>He has to know what happened. Has to find the truth.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>He goes looking for Ana, and finds that she is in Cairo. He’s spent so long hurting, that the blow doesn’t bother him. He’s not revealed to anyone else that he’s alive, so he can understand it.</p><p>It’s there he finally finds Gabriel.</p><p>He picks up a fallen man’s comm, to hear what was going on inside Hakim’s compound, when he freezes.</p><p>“Any progress on our ghost?”</p><p><em>That voice…</em> The moment he hears Gabriel’s raspy orders to the grunt on the end of Hakim’s line, all 6 years of betrayal course through him like a live wire.</p><p>He doesn’t even listen to the following exchange; too busy turning around in a panic, before he physically scaled the wall. He had to get to him. He <em>had</em> to. He was met immediately with fire from within, but Jack could care less. He was a soldier, and this was his mission. He knocks the man in front of him clear over, and practically shouts, “Where <em>is</em> he?” as he desperately scans toe compound.</p><p>It comes as a shot from behind, straight to his back. “Right here, Jack.” Gabriel growls at him as he falls to the dusty ground before him, the younger man clutching his stomach wound. “Always rushing in. I know your every move before you even think it.” Gabriel steps forward, languid. “Always have. Always will.”</p><p>He hears him life the giant shotgun, metal thoughtful against the trigger. “I’ve been looking for you since Switzerland. Knew it’d take more than that to kill you.” It’s almost validating, to hear that he’s driven Gabriel just as mad. “Now here you are.” He taunts, “This is how it should have been.”</p><p>Except death doesn’t come. Gabriel makes a choked noise and turns upwards to where he’s been shot from, as Jack is shot, but instead of painfully ending him, it dramatically allows him to recover. “The pain,” he held his arm, shocked. “It’s gone?”</p><p>“Get in there Jack!” Ana shouts from above, and he doesn’t have to be told twice. He lunges at Gabriel, knocking the stunned man clear to the ground, before sucker punching him.</p><p>The two fight, bitterly, desperately.</p><p>Jack’s brain is a line of static, wholly focused on this one thing.</p><p>
  <strike>Gabriel catches his hands, brown eyes wide, “Morrison, what the hell?” He asks, the sound raspy, but Jack isn’t listening. He knows what he must do.</strike>
</p><p>Reaper gut punches him, growling as Jack is knocked from his thoughts. “You,” He hisses as he’s shot in his arm, the metal plating reflecting the bullet. Jack is left on the floor, shaking, as he watches Gabriel turn to smoke and run away.</p><p>He shakes, shudders.  </p><p>
  <em>He’s on the ground, staring up at Gabriel, inhuman black claws dripping blood, Jack’s face dripping the same. He can’t remember what brought him there. Red eyes bore into blue. “Gabriel,” He says, the words swallowed by silence. “<strong>Why</strong>?”</em>
</p><p>Ana and Gabriel fight, and they fall off the structure together. It surprises Jack, that Gabriel doesn’t simply smoke away, lets Ana use his body to break her own fall.</p><p>She rips off the mask, and is stunned. “What happened to you…?” She asks, eyes wide as she stares at what Jack cannot see.</p><p>“<strong>He</strong> did this to me, Ana,” He growls, “<strong>They</strong> left me to become this thing.”</p><p>“Gabriel,” The woman reels back, as the man melts in front of her, like something out of surrealist art.</p><p>“They left you to die. They left me to suffer…” He speaks somehow without a mouth, his burnt and scarred body vanishing into smoke. “…Never forget that.”</p><p>Ana is left staring up at the sky like it holds answers, and Jack lifts himself from the earth, knowing that it doesn’t.</p><p>“For a second there I was worried you really were going to kill me.”</p><p>Ana has to balance forward before she could stand, and she picks up her gun. “Maybe I should have,” She begins somewhat frostily. “After what you pulled. I had this place staked out for days before you came and ruined everything.” She gets to her feet, pins him with a stare like the shrike would do to a lizard. “You’d better have a good reason.”</p><p>Jack removes his mask, stares at her earnestly. “I was looking for you.” He explains. “I thought you were dead, Ana.” He doesn’t have to say more than that, if the conflict in her expression tells him anything.</p><p>“Just like the world thought you were. But I saw the news reports. You’re so hardheaded you wouldn’t know to die.” She pauses, shakes her head. “All the same, you’re lucky to be alive.”</p><p>
  <em>Got lucky there, Morrison.” Gabriel teases, Jack offering the man a hand up off the floor after a good spar, Jack having sent the older man careening downwards, blood dripping from his nose.</em>
</p><p>“My old boss used to say there’s no such thing as luck.” He recalls. “Just good genetics.”</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel had given their superior officer a fish eye, before Jack roughly pulled him in, the two roughhousing somewhat playfully, Gabriel winding up in a noogie. </em>
</p><p>“He sounds like a jerk.” Ana remarks.</p><p>
  <em>Their remaining roommate had died in the middle of the night, his newfound genetic enhancements enlarging his heart, causing him to just suddenly die. Their superior officer had nothing to say except it was just bad genetics. They’d known this could happen.</em>
</p><p>“Kind of was.”</p><p>He takes a long moment. Centers himself. “This is my war, Ana.” He begins, sobering. “And you’ve given it up, or else you’d have told me you were still alive.”</p><p>
  <em>Countless endless hours in his office, staring at a wall. Sojourn was great. But she was no Ana.</em>
</p><p>Ana looks at him, her expression hardening. “You don’t know what I went through, Jack.” Gabriel’s brown eyes haunt him, occupy his whole mindscape. “I’d failed everyone.” The other man watches Jack from just behind Ana, dressed as he’d done in that video.  “I decided it would be better if I was just a ghost.”</p><p>Gabriel is right in front of him, his face missing, a swirling mass of black smoke. “But I realized even a ghost can protect those who need it.”</p><p>
  <em>Shaking hands place a mask over his face, gentle, but firm. The face forms from the mass, Gabriel’s entire face is only barely recognizable, bruised and burnt and leaking black sludge and blood. And his lips move, slowly, but surely, before kicking him away, the base vanishing around them.</em>
  
</p><p>Ana stands over him, stepping through the ghost. “I don’t care about your war, but I do care about you. You need me, Jack. You need someone to watch your back.”</p><p>He’s able to break into an easier smile, the feeling in his gut breaking as he realizes what she was saying to him. “And here I thought I was supposed to be recruiting you.” He gets to his feet, grabbing his gun, and dusts himself off. “We should get moving.”</p><p>“Just tell me one thing,” Ana says seriously. “What are you going to do when the fighting’s over?”</p><p>He looks at her seriously. “I’m a soldier, Ana. Our war’s never over.” He puts his mask back on, as she crosses her arms, and sighs, before grabbing her gun and following him.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>
  <em>He remembers coming to in the snow outside Zurich, the world an eerie quiet. The base an empty husk eking smoke and fire and screams. Gabriel had kicked his chest right before his memory ends, the Reaper mask on the man’s face flitting in and out of memory. It’s now over Jack’s own, letting him breath, telling him that his systems were compromised.</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel’s voice in his head, telling him he had to get up, a thousand lifetimes ago as the two fought in the crisis side by side.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strike>You can’t let them win. This is what Talon wants. For us both to die here.</strike>
  </em>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>His own voice in his head, saying he was going to kill Gabriel for being a lying, traitorous asshole. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strike>“We need to get out of here. Jack, we need to go, now.”</strike>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <em>
    <strike>“We need to go down with our ship, Reyes.” </strike>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Jack breaths in in shock, almost able to feel the cold of the snowy mountains. Except he’s not there, he’s in Cairo, he recalls, rubbing his head. Ana had had to carry him back to her base. He peers around in the dark, disturbed by the tomb like atmosphere of the place.</p><p>She’d drugged him. The feeling isn’t unfamiliar, he briefly thinks, but the thought is gone in an instant.</p><p>He didn’t know how much time he’d lost, and he was itching to move. <strike>We need to get out of here. Jack, we need to go, now.</strike></p><p>He doesn’t know why he’s so restless. His back is killing him. He can feel stitches on the injury, messy. Ana’s handiwork, apparently. He licks his lips, they were still too dry; he’s dehydrated. How long had he been asleep?</p><p>He has to get up, get some of the feeling out of his bones. He enters the main chamber, and finds Ana’s equipment, including some water bottles. He pilfers one, opening it and drinking it in a blind hurry.</p><p>“Ana?” He calls, and sees that she’s not there.   He moves to the desk, and types in her password, able to guess it in one or two goes. He needs to see what’s going on, has to keep a bead on things in the outside world. He recognizes a lot of this as paranoia, but he can’t stop himself, either.</p><p>He spends maybe an hour on her computer, looking up information on Reaper’s movements, before he sighs, leaning back.</p><p>He looks around again, and the air is completely still. He’s alone, he’s been alone for sometime, and he doesn’t know where Ana is or when she’ll come back.</p><p>Jack sighs, rubs his face in his hands.</p><p>He supposes he’ll just work out, then.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>That’s how Ana finds him, later.</p><p>“You’re going to tear those stitches out,” Ana almost startles him, but he turns over to look at her fully.</p><p>“I was feeling a little restless,” Jack explains, watching her carefully. .</p><p>“You did sleep for two days,” Ana says, answering the unasked question. “Hungry?”</p><p>“I’d kill for a burger.”</p><p>Ana stares him down, disbelieving. Asking him silently if he really was thick headed.</p><p>“But I’m not picky,” Jack flashes her that good guy smile he’d perfected all the way back in high school, but it doesn’t seem to effect Ana. Knowing each other that long tended to build up resistance to some tricks. Gabriel had been the same.</p><p>Ana pulls take out containers from her bag, and places them on the low table in front of him, Jack putting his shirt back on for decency. He eyes up the spread in front of him, a bit disappointed that it wasn’t something more familiar to him, and Ana breaks him out of his thoughts with a quick, “It’s not my cooking, at least.”</p><p>“Thank god for small miracles,” Jack chuckles, and she laughs as well, finding humor in her own failings.</p><p>They ate in silence, Jack gorging on the food to restore his super soldier metabolism, and Ana taking smaller pieces of things, almost subdued. Once they finish, Jack leans back on the crate he was sitting on and settles back into his questioning.</p><p>“Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?” Jack asks again, hoping for some answer rather than deflection. He didn’t tell anyone he’d survived because he’d been the target of an assassination campaign, and Overwatch’s power had only waned without him until it was nothing. Ana had died while he’d still been in power, still could have protected her.</p><p>“I don’t know if you’ll understand,” Ana says, and he’s almost hurt. She had been his best friend for years. “Gabriel would, but you’re different in some ways.”</p><p>Jack schools his expression carefully at hearing that Gabriel would understand Ana better than he would, not willing to touch that for now. “And Fareeha? You let her think you were dead.”</p><p>“That was the hardest part.” Ana sighs. She stands, and walks over to her desk, where there is a small, framed photo of Fareeha with her mother. “Fareeha would have expected Captain Amari to return, but she was gone. The moment I hesitated, I changed.”</p><p>“You can’t blame yourself,” Jack says softly, as he follows her, tries to reassure her. Amélie was a complicated subject, the same as Gabriel. He can’t beat himself up for not knowing, neither could she. “How could you have known?”</p><p>“Don’t patronize me, Jack,” Ana snaps, and he is a bit surprised, but allows her to speak her thoughts. “Of course, it was my fault. It doesn’t have to haunt me for the rest of my life, but I can accept the blame.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t have made a difference to us. We would have wanted you back. It turns out we couldn’t do it without you,” Jack says, touching her shoulder gently. “Overwatch needed you. And now I need you.”</p><p>Ana looks at him, and her brown eye is hard as she watches him, meeting his desperate gaze with her own resolute one. “Getting revenge for what happened won’t accomplish anything other than getting you killed.”</p><p>“Maybe, but I still have to fight. Everyone else gave up, but not me.”</p><p>“Stubborn.” Ana says, not quite an insult.</p><p>“You couldn’t give up the fight either,” Jack reminds her. “Why else were you at Hakim’s palace?”</p><p>“I tried to live quietly, you know. I would be near my daughter and be at peace. But the longer I lived here, the harder it was for me to escape the fact that we are responsible for what happened to this city. We shut down the Anubis project, and Egypt has never recovered.” Ana pulls away, turning her back to Jack. “People’s lives are hard. They’re being taken advantage of by parasites like Hakim. How could I let it go on when I knew there was something I could do?”</p><p>“You’re fighting for justice, just like me,” Jack says.</p><p>Ana’s eye narrows as she looks back at him. “Revenge isn’t justice.”</p><p>Jack throws his hands up, frustrated with her not understanding. “We’re after the same thing. Why do you think Hakim was meeting with Gabriel? He’s working for Talon. The rot on this city is going to spread, and it will ruin the world just like it always does.”</p><p>“Hakim runs a criminal organization that has strangled Cairo. The police and the government either turned a blind eye or they’re being paid off by him. Food supplies aren’t being distributed to people who need them. Medical care is almost impossible to get,” Ana harshly explains her point of view, and Jack grits his teeth. “Look me in the eye and tell me you can leave without doing anything.”</p><p>“Cairo and the world will suffer until we bring them all down! You have to see the bigger picture,” Jack heatedly argues with her and she turns around to face him.</p><p>“Are you even hearing yourself? You would never have made this argument before,” Ana frowns disapprovingly at him. “The way we do things matters.”</p><p>“Times change,” Jack states with finality. “Either you’re coming with me, or I’m leaving. I’ve already wasted too much time.”</p><p>“I’m not going,” Ana denies him any ground in this argument, and he goes quiet.</p><p>For a long moment, Jack stares at her in silence. He feels some cross of betrayal and bitter disappointment. “A sniper takes the most dangerous threat out first. That was your job.” Jack picks up his ruined coat. “If you want to waste your time on petty criminals, so be it. I have a war to fight.”</p><p>He storms out, leaving Ana behind.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>Angry, disappointed, hurt, Jack walks through the quiet streets of Cairo, enjoying the relief from the heat. In spite of it being night in Cairo, and being the city center, the streets are completely dead and dark. He knows that there isn’t a curfew, and even if there were one, the government would struggle to actually enforce it… but the people living here weren’t dumb, either. And plenty of things hid in the dark.</p><p>Gabriel is only one of them.</p><p>He takes stock of his situation, sitting down on a lonely bench to think.</p><p>As it happens, Jack has been tracking the man for some time now, gathering information, and following what leads he had. Before today, he’d had the benefit of going unnoticed, but that had definitely changed now. There’s no doubt that Talon and its allies knew he was coming for them.</p><p>He feels better than he had in some time, in spite of the injury on his back. He knows it has to do with getting the first full night of sleep in god knows how long.</p><p><em>I can’t believe she drugged me, </em>Jack thinks, shaking his head.</p><p>He’s uneasy now, unsure of what exactly to do. Staying in one place for too long is risky, especially now that Gabe is likely looking for him. He knows he has to move on.</p><p>And yet…</p><p>Jack fists his hands up, and stands, turns around, and begins the very long trek back into the desert.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>He’s almost sheepish, as he reenters Ana’s hideout. Ana’s at her desk, going through her computer, apparently looking at the news herself. “Come back for the rest of your things?” She asks without looking up, and Jack resists the urge to sigh as he approaches her.</p><p>“I’ll help you capture Hakim. Once that’s done, we go after Reaper.” He states what he wants, and Ana turns to him, considering him.</p><p>“We have to make sure the city is secure,” Ana says, establishing her terms. “I’ll only leave with you after things here are settled. That means not just Hakim, but his followers, too. I need to know that the people will be safe.”</p><p>Jack’s jaw clenches as he considers her offer. “Then let’s go over to his manor and round him and his men up. One quick strike before they have time to prepare.”</p><p>Ana shakes her head at him. “No rushing in. Remember how it went last time?”</p><p>“It would have been fine if Gabe hadn’t showed up,” Jack points out.</p><p>Ana arches an eyebrow, asking if that really was the truth. He sighs, letting it go. “What’s the plan then?”</p><p>“We start at the bottom and work our way up.” Ana seems to relax some as she explains her thoughts, her carefully laid efforts the accumulation of time spent trying to fix this matter. “Close the net around Hakim, starve him of his resources, and force him out into the open. We have to expose him and the people that are protecting him. Understood?”</p><p>Jack sighs again, relenting. “You know, I told Gabe they picked the wrong person for Strike-Commander.”</p><p>“Yes, but you meant him, not me,” Ana snarkily replies.</p><p>“It could have been Reinhardt,” Jack smirks, finally feeling some degree of assurance as Ana’s teasing means she’s taken him in.</p><p>“Let’s not be crazy now."</p><p>XXXXXX</p><p>
  <em>It’s too bright. It’s too dark. His eyes are stuck ajar, drool on his chin. He’s uncomfortable, but he cannot move.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re going to kill Gabriel Reyes, and then you’re going to kill yourself. It’s what the world needs.” Hands are on him, the room is cold, and he is alone. Faceless men surround him; locked in a chair, held down in spite of the fact he was too far-gone to know to fight.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It’s what the world needs.” His voice comes to him from a million miles away. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“A captain should go down with its ship. This is simply how it has to be. Someone has to do this, it’s what’s right. It’s what the world needs. And you should be the one to do it.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“This is how it has to be, Gabriel. Someone has to do this. I have to do this.” He’s no longer in the chair, he’s staring down at his prey, at the traitor, at the one who has to pay. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They had to go down with their ship.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No,” Gabriel’s bright brown eyes stare up at him, horrified. “No, you don’t, Jack, I,” Jack doesn’t let him finish speaking, and shoots him in the gut.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The wound bleeds in front of him, Gabriel dying in front of him, the man screaming, melting, thrown into fire, open mouth and open chest flooding the room with his blood.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He puts his gun to his head, the motion slow and labored by having to wade through viscous red fluid, Gabriel’s life, intent on finishing the job, and Gabriel manages to pull his body off the floor, the two of them up to their necks in blood, and wrestles the gun out of his hand, now in his own. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jack is ready to die, but Gabriel won’t let him go. Gabriel doesn’t know himself without Jack. And there is no Jack without Gabe.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In spite of all that, or maybe because of all that, Gabriel stares at him, unwilling to shoot him back, the gun left abandoned as Gabriel starts to break apart. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you.” Gabriel’s lips say but the sound is drowning in blood, swallowed by the darkness, and the man is consumed by fire.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>Jack wakes up in the middle of the night, breathing hard. His cot placed awkwardly in a lonely hallway is cold, and his struggles have knocked his blanket off him. Ana is standing over him, seeming concerned.</p><p>“Are you alright?” Ana asks, the two sharing the small apartment as they stake out Hakim.</p><p>He touches his head, feeling the nightmare slip away from him the more he tries to recall it.</p><p>“Just a nightmare.” He breathes, convincing himself of that as much as he was explaining it to Ana.</p><p>Gabriel’s screams ring in his ear, his brown eyes reflecting the fire, turning red in the blood.</p><p>“We’re seeking medical attention tomorrow,” Ana murmurs, and Jack makes a face at the reminder, able to put it out of his mind. “Hakim is taken care of, but before we go after Reaper, that wound of yours needs to be addressed.”</p><p>“I already said we’d go see Angela,” He agrees, quiet.</p><p>“You should talk to her.” Ana chides him. “How many nights have been like this one, Jack?”</p><p>He looks away from Ana, unable to look at her, and see his failures, see Gabriel in the way the older man used to look after him as well.</p><p>
  <em>“We can’t keep on like this, Jack.” Gabriel, bone tired, had told him. They’d finished yet another argument, and rather than respond back to Jack’s final angry point, he’d copped out. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Maybe you can’t.” Jack denied, angry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Rich brown eyes saddened, as the creases in his oldest friends brow deepened. His hand reached for Jack, and he didn’t pull away, wanting desperately for things to be right again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They don’t speak, Gabriel’s calloused thumb running over the backs of Jack’s finger in a tender motion. Apologies have never been their strong suit.</em>
  
</p><p>(I’m so sorry)</p><p>
  <em>“I’m going to fix this.” Gabriel said, certain. “We’re not out of this fight yet. I told you back then, and I still mean it. We’ll get through this together.” </em>
  
</p><p>He realizes he’s been quiet too long, and Ana’s expression is knitted in concern. He breaths out a great shuddering sigh. “I’ll talk to her.” He agrees, to get Ana off his back. “This is my fight, though, Ana. I don’t expect either of you to understand.”</p><p>Ana gives him a pitying look, and sits next to him on his cot. “I may not understand it,” She murmurs, comforting him by just existing in the same space as him. “But I’m here for you, Jack.”</p><p>XXXXXX</p><p>It’s harder than he thought it’d be, sitting in Angela’s small apartment, the woman looking him over. Ana had physically dragged him into the place, leaving him passed out on the couch while she and Angela talked about what had gone down.</p><p>Now he was awake, and that meant that they had to talk to each other.</p><p>Once upon a time, Angela had been a bright-eyed thing who he’d enticed onto Overwatch’s team with the promise of resources. Now she was stuck here, in Cairo, working the same issue Ana had been caught in.</p><p>“So…what did this?” She asks, fingers brushing over the wound.</p><p>“I was shot point blank in the back.” He gruffly tells her, and Angela rummages through what materials she’d already brought over to him during the examination.</p><p>“That doesn’t explain the…necrotic tissue.” She murmurs, looking it over in worry. “It’s not a normal infection. This wound…it’s wrong. An infection this bad would definitely kill you.”</p><p>“Stubbornness is the only thing with a chance of killing him,” Ana says from the kitchen, having left to find herself some tea, the two women having already talked.</p><p>“I can try to run some tests, but I don’t have the equipment I need here,” Angela tells him, applying an anesthetic sealing spray to his back, the sensation cold. “This is an aid camp, not a genetics lab.”</p><p>“Time isn’t something we have a lot of,” He dryly remarks, having already known this, and feeling a bit justified about how much he’d dragged his feet with Ana over it. “Just give me a few medkits. I’ll make do.”</p><p>“I’ll see what I can scrounge up for you.”</p><p>Angela stands, walks away, her irritability clear in her shortness. He’s surprised by her terseness, but then again, it’s been a few years, and she’d thought they were both dead. Not to mention, the tiny apartment was hardly the state of the art facility she’d worked in prior to the fall of Overwatch.</p><p>He watches her dig through the boxes of supplies that were scattered around, practically acting as furniture. The place was frankly a dump, and it wasn’t a place that was deserving of a mind like Angela’s. There’s guilt, buried underneath that thought, and Jack bites his lip, closes his eyes, pushes it away.</p><p>He starts to make use of himself, feeling awful just sitting on his thumbs, looking through some of the supply crates and making a small pile of useful looking supplies before he had to ask. “What are you doing here, Angela?”</p><p>“Trying to find some medkits,” She shoots back, defensive. “Like you asked.”</p><p>“That’s not what I mean.” He picks up a heavy piece of medical equipment, and turns it over curiously. “What are you doing here in Cairo?”</p><p>“That’s delicate.” She paces over quickly and snatches it from him, before she tosses it back into the box with a little thud turned her glower into a wince. She sighs, tense “There are people here who need help.”</p><p>“Surely a hospital or a lab at a university would be better suited to you,” Ana points out as she walks back into the room, holding her cup of tea in her hands.</p><p>“As it turns out, being a prominent ex-Overwatch official isn’t the sort of experience on your CV that people are looking for,” Angela snaps, and both Jack and Ana paused, looked at each other, before looking back at her.</p><p>The woman takes a deep breath, collecting herself. “I’d prefer to keep a low profile. More than I can say about the two of you.”</p><p>Jack scowls at the accusation, and Ana gives Angela a knowing look. “At least my enemies know that I’m coming for them.”</p><p>“Your enemies?” Angela incredulously asks, seeming about ready to laugh. “The United States’ government, Germany’s largest bank, Helix Security. Did I miss anything?”</p><p>“LumériCo.” Jack nodded at that, not willing to back down. If Angela was going to argue with him, he’d lay it all out there for her.</p><p>“And Mexico’s largest energy company. Which, incidentally, is run by their incredibly popular former president and universally loved <em>war hero</em>.” Angela sighs again, running a hand through her hair. “Those enemies won’t do much for your reputation.”</p><p>“Collateral damage is an unavoidable part of war,” He reminds her.</p><p>“You were always good at rationalizing things,” Angela bites back, and his eyes narrow.</p><p>“I’m getting closer to finding the ones responsible. I’m getting closer to the <em>truth</em>.” He says sharply, knowing his battles, knowing this one better than anyone.</p><p>“The truth,” Angela’s mouth flattens into a disapproving line.</p><p>“The truth about what happened to Overwatch. About Talon. Switzerland. About everything. That’s my new mission.”  He explains, firm.</p><p>“It doesn’t seem that new. Other than the masks.” She tells him, not impressed, and his fists ball up.</p><p>“What would you have me do, then?” Jack snaps at her, irritated at being questioned. He’d known she wouldn’t get it. None of them had, and look at what happened. “Fly to Gibraltar and join up with Winston? You think the same people who brought down Overwatch won’t take him down, too?”  </p><p>A broken base, Gabriel’s corpse burning away, Jack left to die in the snow, body mostly broken.</p><p>“Let Winston play hero,” Jack says dismissively. “I’ll do what needs to be done. Reyes, Ogundimu, Maximilien, Vialli, Sombra, O’Deorain, and the rest of them.</p><p>They’ll be dealt with.”</p><p>Angela looks away, unable to face the facts apparently. She winces at Reyes’ name, shaking her head.</p><p>“We were all responsible, Jack. Overwatch is gone. Your personal revenge won’t change anything.” The idea that he’s somehow motivated by <em>personal</em> revenge is almost ridiculous. Doesn’t she see what’s happened because of Talon? She’s stuck here now because of them. Ana died because of them, Jack almost died because of them.</p><p>“Someone has to make them pay. I will get justice.” For him, for Overwatch.</p><p>
  <strike>For Gabriel.</strike>
</p><p>“Justice,” Angela looks at him, seems to see through him, through every broken crack of him. “If you keep this up, you will have proven to the world that Overwatch really did become the thing they feared. I wish you could see that.”</p><p>With that, she walks away, head low, Ana next to him in quiet support.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>Talon seemed to attack abruptly, and he knows in his gut that this is in revenge for what he and Ana had done to destroy Hakim’s little crime ring.</p><p>They’d managed to talk Angela into donning the Valkyrie suit to join them, but even then, he’d not been prepared for the devastation that lay before them. Talon’s drop ships were just hanging in the airspace, Talon soldiers littering the scene in front of him. He grimaces as he dove directly into the chaos, Ana staying well placed above him, a sniper in her perch. Meanwhile, Mercy flies above them, a glowing symbol of what Overwatch stood for, of what good he’d managed to create in his life.</p><p>Another series of explosions go off, and he grits his teeth as he sees a familiar black mass appears from the smoke and fire.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strike>The man reformed on his feet, the two of them now in Jack’s sideways office, the building literally at a tilt following the first bombing run from the skies. He stares at Jack, Jack cocks at him expectantly. </strike>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strike>Gabriel lunges first this time, taking initiative, blood spilling over the floor, and the two return to their brawl.</strike>
  </em>
</p><p>Gunfire breaks him from his reverie, and he has to take cover as it explodes from where Gabriel is encased in smoke.</p><p>“What is <em>that</em>?!” Angela breathes into the comm, stunned.</p><p>He growls, low and deep, practically seeing red in the night. “<em>Gabriel</em>.”</p><p>“That’s not our concern, Morrison. We have people to save.” Angela tells him, and he shakes his head, unable to keep his eyes off Gabriel.</p><p>“That’s your job, doctor. This is ours.” He shuts off his link, and stalks his way back into the fray, trusting that Ana would be close behind him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the center of the chaos, Reaper revels. A white mask turns to him as he chokes out a Helix security officer, and he tosses the limp body aside. “Jack.” He purrs, the sound dark. “I knew you’d been sneaking around here. Just a matter of time before you came around. Have you had fun with Hakim?”</p><p>Ana shoots him from afar, and his eyes glow in the night as he turns to her. “So you’ve managed to recruit her. Guess you’re going back on my list, Ana.” He growls, one shotgun aimed at Jack, the other aimed at Ana.</p><p>“What happened to you, Gabriel?” Her voice sounds broken over the comms, and Jack growls at Gabriel as he shakes his head.</p><p>“I already told you.” He rumbles, body tensing. “But you’ve already taken his side.”</p><p>That is all the warning he gives Jack as he lunges back to him, claws extended, and Jack is ready, body moving on its own without thought as he reengaged him in the same sick twisted fight they’d had in Cairo, <strike>in Zurich.</strike></p><p>Ana is behind them, supporting Jack, warily watching Reyes as the two fight, bitterly, desperately.</p><p>It echoes, rattles around in his mind. The way that they’re fighting, its familiar, automatic.</p><p>
  <em>What he’s supposed to do.</em>
</p><p>The smoke all around him is familiar as well, the sound of explosions, the occasional gunshot that lands in his coat and tears the leather but not the Kevlar beneath it.</p><p>He lands a fierce punch on Gabriel’s mask, knocking him flat over, the man hissing under fire from both of them, the black mass oozing black sludge and smoke that melded into the surroundings a threatening visage.</p><p>“Hola,” A cheery voice greets his ears, and Jack whirls around as he is face to face with a woman in purple, her augmentations glowing neon in the night and the smoke. “So sorry to interrupt this,” She wheeled around him with a roundhouse kick, and knocked Jack to the floor. “But I need <em>all</em> of you alive, so I have to cut this short.”</p><p>The short woman winks at Ana as she picks up Gabriel, and vanishes in an instant in a flash of purple electronic static. Her purple sugar skull calling card falls to the earth, and Jack is left feeling empty for a long moment, and unleashes an angry cry from his chest, tearing at the air in front of him.</p><p> </p><p>He has to end Gabriel.</p><p>They have to go down with their ship.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He has to end <em>himself</em>.  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The thought hits him like a sack of bricks to the temple, and he looks at his shaking hands. Where was that coming from?</p><p>“Jack,” Ana calls, breaking him out of his thoughts. “We have to go. Angela’s not answering her comm; I think that last round of explosions has left her incapacitated.</p><p>He shakes, angry, not knowing where to place it. He bites down so hard that his jaw aches, and he feels his hand hurt under the strain of his fists. Gabriel got away. He’d get him. He’d end this.</p><p>He runs from the smoke, he and Ana making their escape and returning to Angela, who had passed out, partially buried under rubble but thankfully, seemingly unharmed.</p><p>He knows, though, from experience, as he lifted the boy from her arms and carried him out of the combat zone, that those scars ran deeper.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bit by bit, he returns to his own skin, having dropped Angela and her charges off at her clinic in the wee hours of the morning. The rest of the day, they’d been busy, gathering up what remained of their things.</p><p>They had to move now, Gabriel had known they were here, and that was a dangerous place to stay. Talon’s drop ships had headed northwest, and so that was where they’d go.</p><p>“Are you alright, Jack?” Ana asks, and he rubs his forehead.</p><p>“I am,” He says, but he’s unsure of himself. “I just…I think that…that fight, it reminded me of Zurich.” He murmurs, and Ana nods, uncertain. He doesn’t mention how the more that he tries to recall facts of Zurich; the more they seem to just smoke away. He doesn’t mention how he’d wanted to end Gabriel, and then himself.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They had agreed to say goodbye to Angela before they left, the woman having had been a good help. His gear is heavy on his back, his thoughts weighing heavily on his mind. There was something underneath it all that needed more investigating. He’d gotten this far, and he was sure that Gabriel had answers, and had to answer for what had happened.</p><p>The sun had gone down again by the time Angela broke away from her group long enough for them to approach her again.</p><p>“Where will you go next?” She asks, seeming stressed.</p><p>“Gabriel was here. We have to follow him,” Jack simply states, and she bites her lip.</p><p>“He survived?” She asks, and he nods, before answering.</p><p>“Old soldiers are hard to kill,” Jack sighs, rubbing his neck as he tells her what he knows. “Gabriel led the attack. We need to follow the trail before it goes cold. Somewhere in Europe, it seems like. It was where we had been heading before we took a detour here. Maybe see some old friends.”</p><p>“Well, good luck out there. I hope you find... whatever it is you’re looking for,” Angela says, awkward, and he decides to try his luck. He already had gotten Ana on his side, after all. Maybe Angela could be convinced.</p><p>“You could come with us. We could still use your help.” Jack watches her, waits expectantly, but knows deep down Angela will not follow him down the path he’s going.</p><p>She shakes her head after a moment, and he can’t even be disappointed. “I can’t stay here, but I can’t go with you either. We’re heading in different directions.”</p><p>“Time will tell,” He nods, knowing in his gut that it was more likely than not that they’d be on the same parallel route. “Good luck, Angela. And thanks for the medkits.” Jack smiles at her, expression softening as he gives her a mock salute, turning tail and walking away, leaving Ana to say her own goodbyes to the other woman.</p><p>He’s still a soldier. He had a mission to complete, one way or another.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This has been living rent free in my head since i posted the first chapter, so uh, jack's side post-Zurich story? aka 'how many times can alex rewrite bastet/valkyrie for fanfic purposes?' </p><p>there might b a part 3 of what goes down like....you know, in the theoretical End where gabe's got no where left to run.  We'll see.</p><p>lemme know what you think!  Hopefully its good.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Gabriel's known what lies for him at the end of the road for years, and even though he pushed it away, postponed the inevitable, certain things he's said and done or failed to say or do will always come back to haunt him.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s unsurprising, perhaps, to some, but the longer this fight is drawn out- the more times he faces Tracer, Winston and their little merry band- the more he questions himself.</p><p>To others, it definitely was inevitability. Doomfist asked him many times if he was feeling sentimental, <em>soft</em>. And for a long time, it was impossible. He was in so much pain, and it ran deeper than his bones, poisoned his blood, that he needed to blame someone.</p><p>Gabriel is tired of scheming, as Jack had called it, tired of being the one to know, because it had only brought him <em>this </em>way of living.</p><p>But it comes as an unwelcome shock when, one day, he’s leading a Talon assault on the newly reformed Overwatch, and the damn fucking omnics decide to interrupt him.</p><p>“You know,” Sigma cheerily addresses the null sector scrap metal in front of him. “I do not <em>believe</em> this was supposed to happen.” The bot answers him with a shot that Sigma catches, eliminates from existence, before the terrifying man crunches the bot out of existence with a thought. “My, no manners these days.” He muses.</p><p>“Sombra, you better have a good reason for this.” He growls into the comm.</p><p>“Boss,” She cuts in, fighting herself apparently, sending a sharp…something, through his gut. “No idea what’s going on. Null sector has attacked my post- requesting immediate backup.”</p><p>He and Moira look to each other in concern, both apparently questioning the other in spite of how much they shared. Doomfist is the one negotiating with Null Sector. “Sigma,” Moira commands. “We return to base, assist Sombra,” and the older man nods, turning around to head back.</p><p>“Reyes,” Moira seems genuinely concerned, and Reaper taps his fingers on the wall. “Did you hear about this?”</p><p>“No.” He drawls. “If we lose this window Moira…” He trails off. He actually doesn’t know what his point is. There’s a part of him that thinks of consequences, but Doomfist is the member who is in connection with Null Sector. So any breakdown of communication would be Doomfist’s fault, not Reaper’s.</p><p>“I don’t think that particularly matters.” She reminds him. “Overwatch is going to be here, and if Null sector is keeping <em>our</em> troops busy, then today’s attack is going to be bigger than expected.” She analyzes. “There may well yet be another chance today. But Sombra is a valuable tool in this fight. We cannot lose her.”</p><p>He sighs, rubs his temples. He still owes Sombra for rescuing him in Cairo, having been beaten down by Helix, and then by Jack and Ana.  He knows, logically, that she has more use alive than dead, and she didn’t have the breadth of experience against omnics that he did, nor the firepower of his strike team.</p><p>“Gabriel,” Moira’s gaze hardens.   “We’re going. Now. Something stinks.” She quickly takes charge of the situation, her stature letting her tower over him as a leader, and Reaper growls, angry that his plans were already being driven off track. He refuses to acknowledge the knotting in his gut.</p><p>In the shadows, crossing streets in the dead of night, the two missing each other by less than 10 feet, Gabriel catches a glimpse of Jack and himself in the reflection of a puddle, the two working together to battle off omnics, hands touching each other and</p><p>He looks up, shocked, and sees Tracer and Winston, before he fades back into the night, hand coming up to his head.</p><p>It’d been a long time since he’d thought of any of their good times. He’s been so consumed by pain that he found looking back was like just wanting to be miserable. Remembering what was and what never could be again.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The mission isn’t anything particularly special. London was once again under attack from Null Sector, and they were duty bound to step in and make a stand against their attempts to destroy the grid. Then they’d gotten news that there was also likely to be a Talon interception on site, and he and Ana had been more willing to actually join this mission.</p><p>Their companions had been…surprised, to say the least, when they’d rejoined, but in spite of any awkwardness, the help from the old vanguard was appreciated, even if Jack didn’t necessarily appreciate being held up as the strike commander.</p><p>McCree had pulled him aside with his and Sojourn’s suspicions, and he and Ana had confirmed it. The news had devastated the team, but they were doing more than standing in Gabriel’s shadow now.</p><p>They were a new vision of Overwatch. A generation shaped after its height. The further they were from his mistakes, the better.</p><p>The team for the mission was rather large. Angela, Genji, McCree, Tracer, Winston and Reinhardt making up a significant portion of the backbone, and they were being joined by Zarya, D.va, and Lynx 17.</p><p>The mission was therefore going exceptionally smoothly, especially because it seemed like Talon was a no-show.</p><p>“Seems like we didn’t need this many people,” D.va said from her MEKA, and McCree shrugged.</p><p>“I don’t mind the easy ride.” He told her. “Listen, one of the last times Genji and I went against Talon together, it was a real shit show. I’ll tell you sometime.”</p><p>“McCree,” Ana said, getting him back on task, the woman providing significant cover.</p><p>“Hey,” Lynx 17 spoke up on the comms. “I’m picking up something rather strange on surveillance. I think we should investigate.”</p><p>“What is it?” Tracer asks, and the omnic pauses, before they say something that has Jack and the rest of the team blanching.</p><p>“…Talon is currently being attacked <em>by</em> Null sector.”</p><p>“That would explain why we’ve not seen much of them.” Winston mulls over the news. “But, could it be a trap?”</p><p>“Null sector appears to be killing their ground forces.” Lynx 17 disagrees, before the omnic makes a shocked noise. “Wait- my communication is being hacked.”</p><p>An unfortunately familiar voice comes over the feed, and it sends rage through Jack’s veins.  “Hey, not to sound desperate or anything,” Sombra grunts. “But I believe two of you there owe me a favor, and I’m in a bit of hot water here.”</p><p>“Sombra?” Zaryanova asks, stunned, and the voice makes an annoyed grunt.</p><p>“Listen, I know when I’m outnumbered. I know when <em>we’re </em>outnumbered. I’m sending you our location. I’ll even surrender. The others might be less than happy about it, but again. I know when we’re outmatched, and <em>I’d</em> like to live to see another day.”</p><p>Sombra’s voice lowers to a harsh whisper. “But listen. One caveat. Keep Morrison <em>away</em>. I’ll explain it later, but <em>hurry.”</em></p><p>Ana looks at him funny, but he instantly was looking up the coordinates on his comm, and was off running ahead of them, ignoring how the rest of the team had called for him to wait.</p><p>Tracer is unfortunately as fast as he was, and D.va is also able to catch up in her MEKA.</p><p>“Morrison,” She says, concern obvious in her voice. “Do you know what that’s about? Are you sure you should go?”</p><p>Jack grunts, never having been more sure of something in his life. “Gabriel’s there.” He growls at her. “That’s always been my mission, Tracer,” He warns her darkly. “You won’t stop me.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s a bloodbath by the time Reyes and his other two elite units show up to the drop ship. He’s never had the faith in Talon’s forces he put into Blackwatch, but to see it all fall to pieces because the threat came from <em>the inside</em>…it boils his veins, reminds him all too much of the trials that he went through in the same organization he’s trying to take down <em>now</em>. No matter where he goes, it seems betrayal and double crossing is doomed to follow.</p><p>Sombra is on her last proverbial legs. The young woman is battered, beaten, clearly having used her technology against them, but since they were previously her allies, they had ways around her technology. She was having to reinvent things on the fly, and it was leaving her defenseless.</p><p>“Boss!” She says as he approaches from the shadows, forming from smoke. “<em>Shit,</em>” she curses as she catches her breath. “I was wondering if you were going to show up.”</p><p>“Sigma and Moira are outside. What is the situation?”</p><p>Sombra grimaces. “Well, they’ve got my built in immunities to my current tech that Talon’s been giving them, as well as a fancy new couple layers of protection that they just upgraded to.” She gestures. “This was planned. I’ve gotten through a few, but there are just many different versions, they’re not compatible with my current configurations. It’s made it difficult for me to hack into the waves of fucking omnics that have been approaching.” She gestures to her tech, frustration bleeding out of her. “I’ve got maybe another couple EMP devices, but once they’re gone, they’re gone. I wasn’t going to use them all just in case they have something really nasty to throw at us, and we still need to get out of here.”</p><p>There was the distinct noise of everything crunching and metal screeching outside, and both Reyes and Sombra grimace at the other. “Well,” She dryly notes. “I think we’re alright to leave cover for now.”</p><p>“Sounds like Sigma handled it,” He agrees, offering her a hand up, the woman dumping the omnic she’d been connected to in order to meet Moira outside to treat Sombra’s injuries.</p><p>Moira is standing with Sigma, the two of them going over their troops for any potential survivors, the older man removing his helmet, sweating and panting from the effort of exercising that much of his ability.</p><p>“Was it smart to do that?” He asks Moira, and she purses her lips.</p><p>“It was necessary,” She says instead of answering him. “I believe we should leave anyway. There is no opening for us, and from what I’m seeing from our grunts last communications, there seems to be a larger party of Overwatch members than we had expected.” She moves her hands over Sombra, applying her healing biotic spray to the worst of her injuries, Sombra’s skin closing up, “We’re outnumbered, essentially three to one.   If Amari is with them, and she manages to hit even one of us with that damned dart gun of hers, our odds significantly worsen.”</p><p>“Amari is with them.” Sombra agrees readily, her concern seeming to steadily grow. “Right before they turned on us, I caught a glimpse at who we were up against by accessing their comms. Morrison and Amari, Zaryanova, her omnic friend and Song, Winston and Tracer, along with McCree, Ziegler, Shimada and Reinhardt.”</p><p>“Christ.” Moira curses, laying a bandage over Sombra’s abdominal injury, the woman hissing at the sensation of Moira’s long nails against her skin. “We need to evacuate.”</p><p>The air tasted blue and felt electric, and Reaper knew that there was no time for such an effort.</p><p>“How we doing today, loves?” Tracer cheekily announces her presence, kicking Moira’s feet from underneath her, the lanky woman spilling backwards before fading into nothingness, as Reyes turned to smoke to escape the kick, Sombra ducking. “Not too well I’d imagine, if your allies have turned on you.”</p><p>Reaper growls as he reforms, his hellfire shotguns firmly gripped in his hands. Moira reforms slightly behind him, using him as her shield.</p><p>“Subject 28?” Sigma asks, voice betraying his confusion, and he and Moira share a look of knowing horror, the woman’s panic bleeding into his head.</p><p>“Dr. De Kuiper?” The monkey seems completely dumbfounded, as Sigma approaches, floating towards them. Amari seems to have the jump then, as the older man suddenly collapses, Reinhardt and Winston catching him with a gasp.</p><p>“This situation is no longer able to be salvaged.” Moira notes, lifting her hands up in preparation of a fight they both know they could not win.</p><p>“Working on a plan,” He rasps lowly, looking around the field for Morrison, when they are quite literally jumped on by Genji and Angela, the two diving straight for Moira and himself. He’s able to dodge, but Moira isn’t as quick on her feet, not as used to being directly under fire like this, not by Overwatch.</p><p>Sombra, meanwhile, seems to be chatting up Zaryanova, the omnic, and the other young woman in the MEKA unit as she fought them, rejuvenated by Moira’s efforts. Unfortunately for her, it’s not a long fight, because when she turns to attempt to rouse Sigma, Zaryanova launches something at her, and she yelps, suddenly held in place by gravity, as the omnic knocks her gun from her hands.</p><p>Mercy is fast at work, and clicks a collar into place on Moira’s neck, while Genji holds her down, the woman panicking as her powers suddenly were locked away, as McCree saunters over. “It’s over, Reyes,” He growls, brown eyes locking with his old commander. “Drop your weapons.”</p><p>“Where’s Morrison?” He growls, looking around even as he allowed his guns to vanish, knowing that there was no way out, not with his allies trapped, and despite how everyone tenses, and seems to glance from side to side, the man was no where in sight.</p><p>“Now you’re looking for me, Gabe?” Jack says, and Gabriel is forced to dodge a punch from the side, shadow stepping to another corner, over behind Ana.</p><p>Jack is fast, though, like lightning, McCree and Tracer chasing after him.</p><p>“He’s surrendered, Morrison! We need him alive,” McCree grabs hold of the older man, the two getting into a dirty scuffle that’s ended with Morrison punching McCree, the man falling to the ground in surprise.</p><p>“Jack, that is enough,” Ana says, standing between him and Gabriel.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Jack, stand down,” Ana tells him, her voice firm, her expression showing the cracks of concern beneath her front. Gabriel keeps his red eyes pinned on Jack, the hunted watching the hunter, trapped in a corner though he was, they had simply captured the rest of his team. There’d be a chance later to escape.</p><p>Except Jack is staring at Ana as though she is an obstacle, increasingly seeming out of control, gritting his teeth, brow furrowing, the muscles in his jaw visibly working.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(His mission is here. He must complete it, he <em>must</em>, he has to, there’s no other choice.</p><p>Go down with their ship. Destroy Overwatch. Go down together. It all has come down to this, it has to. Their fight won’t end until they’re both dead.</p><p>He snarls, teeth bared with his intentions, and points his gun at the interloper, fully intending on getting the job done right this time.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>But Gabriel recognizes his intention subconsciously before he has time to think on it. He takes Ana’s hand, and pulls her aggressively to him, right as Jack’s gun goes off.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Gabriel,” Ana bemoans, resting her head against the arm of his couch. “Why didn’t you warn me about divorce?” He stands at his counter, pouring an obscene amount of whiskey into the glasses, shaking his head.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I <strong>did</strong>,” He hums, offering her the cocktail, the other woman taking it and taking a thoughtful sip from it. “I think Martha did too.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She still sends me cards.” Ana says, and Gabriel nods, knowing that the woman, while she didn't quite get their world, had got on with Ana, and their daughters had been friends growing up.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Well, she told me to send you her love.” He sits next to her, looking at his own empty ring finger. “And that you could call her if you wanted to talk, but she understands that you’re busy.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I just…” She sighs, looking at her empty left ring finger. “I never saw it coming. Sam knows how important the work we do is. He was with me at the height of my career in the Egyptian army, and back then… well, he agreed to have Fareeha with me.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I always felt like…well. Even if you know how important something is, sometimes we all want to be selfish.” He sighs. “Victoria wouldn’t speak to me for almost a year after I missed her high school graduation. It does take a toll. Shit adds up. Our jobs aren’t exactly kind to us, and that means we have less time for the people we do them for.” He looks over at Ana, her familiar edges worn down by time, that same stress they’d both been through. “Martha eventually told me, that if she wanted to sleep alone, she wouldn’t have gotten married.” He gestures with his glass, the liquid sloshing a bit. “And I told her I was sorry. And that was that.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“That she was able to ever sleep in the same bed as you, her strength…” Ana said, and shoved him lightly. “You and Jack run so hot I thought I was getting hot flashes during the crisis.” She pauses, and sighs. “In reality, even when I was able to go home…Sam and I slept in separate beds. He moves too much.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He swallows his remark about his ex-wife’s cold feet and extremities, and offers her a hand. She takes it, and squeezes, the motion familiar, grounding.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“He doesn’t understand.” Gabriel quietly states, and Ana nods. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t think he can. He tries, and I have loved him through his attempts but…”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Once people start calling you a hero, it’s hard to put down the gun? Even if that same gun is the shovel you’re digging your grave with?” He guesses, and Ana breathes out a half-hearted laugh. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Speaking from experience, Gabriel?”</em>
  
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ana is shocked, yet is safely tucked against his chest; the world is still, only for a moment, before it blooms back into aggression, hurt that is coming from somewhere deep in his chest, static in his mind as he feels Moira’s own panic reflecting back his own, and a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach. Sigma snores against Winston, the ape seeming pained that he’s unable to help Tracer as her scream ends, the sound registering finally to his ears.</p><p>He lost more than he’s been willing to admit after his callous resurrection. Memories, especially of the attack.</p><p>But a through line runs through Moira’s head and it’s his own panicked thoughts she’s thinking on, unable to stop herself from bleeding into Gabriel.</p><p>
  <em>Jack how did they get to you? How didn’t I protect you?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Why</em>!” Tracer cries, angry, hurt, shocked, and rushes forward after McCree, the two of them struggling to get ahold of Jack, the man snarling as he reaches for Reyes, teeth bared as he threatens to break both Tracer and Jesse in his mad desperation to destroy the man before him, a second time.</p><p>“Is <em>this</em> what you meant?” Ana breathes from his chest, and it coalesces differently in his mind this time. Shock replaces anger, and one of his best friends holding onto him for support makes gears turn in his head.</p><p>Jack…did this to him.</p><p>He looks at the madman in front of him, recognizing what he’d become, and realizing what he’d forgotten, not the memories themselves, but one could guess what was before by its outline in a fossil, a cast that’s shaped like it.</p><p>No. Not… Jack.</p><p>He releases Ana, and puts a hand to his head, eyes wide behind his mask as Jack screams, animalistic. He’s being denied his purpose, his sole purpose. He can’t remember, he, he <em>can’t. </em>He couldn’t. It hurts to remember. But it’s obvious, even now, that the person in front of him. It’s…</p><p>It’s not Jack.</p><p>It had been a ruse. It’s <em>so</em> obvious, as he turns the situation over and over in his head.</p><p>This isn’t Jack anymore. This thing in front of him wearing Jack’s skin…</p><p>“We need to go down with our ship!” He shouts again, raging. “Reyes! Fight me! End this! Destroy <em>Overwatch</em>!”</p><p>It was a test of his loyalty to Talon. He had never been supposed to go near Morrison that day. He’d been supposed to let him die. Instead, he’d been outed as having yet still sympathized with Overwatch, against Talon’s interests.</p><p>“<em>Kill me!”</em> Jack howls, ripping his arm away from Tracer, the petite woman desperately hanging on, Angela and Genji frozen in horror as they hold Moira back, the device around the woman’s neck preventing her from freeing herself.</p><p>Ana slowly pulls away from him, and pulls out her side weapon. She takes aim, and shoots Jack down with a sleep dart, the man collapsing against Tracer and McCree, the young woman crying as she said something to McCree, the man’s face grim, seeming to be coming to a similar conclusion as Gabriel had.</p><p>He failed that test a second time, he realizes absently, as he hears clapping from the shadows.</p><p>An omnic reveals itself, walking forward. Tracer’s eyes narrow at it, snarling. “Thank you for showing your true colors to us, Reyes.” It speaks smoothly, blue eyes turning red.</p><p>He growls, as pieces begin to line up with each other. The way that the omnic factions had suddenly turned against them, the way that he and Overwatch’s team were forced to converge on the Omnics terms instead of his own.</p><p>“We simply must thank your coworker, Sombra. If she hadn’t discovered the files that O’Deorain had erased from Zurich and preserved them, we would <em>never</em> have suspected.”</p><p>Sombra and Moira tense from where they’re being held captive, Moira seeming to panic more than Sombra, who simply goes steely, as Overwatch goes tense surrounding them.</p><p>It pops up a little holographic video from a device in its cape. He turns away from the depiction of himself, whole. He remembers this video. He can imagine what Moira deleted from it. It picks up abruptly from the middle of the audio.</p><p>
  <em>“She might have a few things to say about me. Believe them or don’t. If I’m gone, I want you to be happy.” The Gabriel Reyes in the holovid pauses, collects himself, and then looks directly at the camera. “And if you’re seeing this…well, Talon and the Eye succeeded. I’m dead. So I have to explain a few things. Following the shutdown of Blackwatch, Moira was approached by an extension of Talon that was already inside Overwatch. She brought the matter to me directly to discuss it, as she was my closest confidant at the time.” He rubs his neck, awkwardly smiles. “Sorry, Jack. There was just…so much I wanted to tell you, but I knew, the more people you tell a secret to, the more chances it gets out. I didn’t want that kind of pressure on you. Moira was already despised, so she wasn’t that sort of target. Instead, they assumed she’d be sympathetic.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She had several good points about taking them up on the offer. For one, it was an easy source of income. Treating this hasn’t been cheap.” He coughs, wiping away black sludge from his lips. “And besides. The information we’d have access to on the inside of Talon? We weren’t going to get another opportunity like that again. They assumed I was angry, that you’d taken my spot as Commander of Overwatch, and now you’d essentially fired me from my post as leader of Blackwatch. But I’m willing to play a long game. With Moira my pretend handler,” There’s a commotion, as Moira looks hard into the viewer, her red eye focusing on the camera intently. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“There’s nothing pretend about it, Morrison. That you’ve failed to notice Reyes’ deteriorating mental stability is sinful and I will not forgive you for it.   I’m his handler. It is far too <strong>convenient</strong> that you never look close enough into his business to fail to see him setting up so much end of life care for himself.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He grumbles, shoving her off screen. “Moira,” He hisses, before shaking his head. “She’s defensive about her work. But I’ve gotten really off track. I took on my old mask.” He forms it, giving the camera another shaky smile. “The Reaper. The DOD isn’t going to be happy I told you that, but then again, they’ve been less than useless in fixing what they caused. I’ve been working for the department of defense for years. Say what you will about it…but they technically own both of us Jackie. They’re damn sure to remind you of that once I’m gone, but again, I digress. We joined Talon to help take it down from the inside, as best we could.”</em>
</p><p>Everyone’s eyes are on him, and it’s deeply uncomfortable, the shock, horror, and piecing together of evidence suddenly before them. “We always had our suspicions.” The omnic continues. “The <em>hero</em> of humanity doesn’t simply decide to change side midway through the fight.” He took another step forward. “And once again, we’re proven correct. Humans lie all the time to get what they want.”</p><p>The omnic raises his gun at Reyes, and Overwatch is torn immediately, between training their guns on Reaper, and wanting to fight this new threat. “Kace,” Tracer is the first to make the transition, guns aimed at the omnic instead of Reaper. “You’re surrounded. We’ve won this fight.”</p><p>“Tell me, Reyes.” The omnic ignores Tracer altogether. “Will your doctor be able to put you back together a second time?”</p><p>He glares at the omnic, as so much of his past is thrown into his face, as he begins to stew in what exactly had happened to him, where his revenge had always needed to be put at, his red eyes meeting red. “I’ve always put my confidence in her abilities.” He growls lowly, silently daring him, and the omnic tilts his head, considering him.</p><p>“What about <em>him</em>?” The omnic asks, and before anyone can move, before anyone else knows who Kace is talking about, Gabriel dives in front of Jack, and takes the shot intended for the unconscious man.</p><p>Jack Morrison will <em>not</em> die lying down. <em>Gabriel</em> will never allow it. Not then, not now, not <em>ever</em>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He promised they’d get through this together. If they die together, they die together. But he wanted to <em>live</em>. No matter the agony he was put through, he kept going, in this sick farce of an echo of who he used to be, clinging to the only structures that were left for him.  </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In spite of everything…he still meant that.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The pain of the shot doesn’t actually register, not over the cacophony of pain he was always in. There was nothing special about this, not in how shots fired at the space he vacated and to the omnic, a mad flurry of activity as the omnic ran from battle, some too shocked to even move.</p><p>“Gabriel!” Moira yells, horrified, fighting against her restraints.</p><p>“Gabe!” Sombra shouts from where she’s held captive by the two new women he couldn’t recognize and their omnic ally.</p><p>“No!” McCree cries out, seemingly understanding what was going on in front of him, suddenly grasping that Gabriel was once again planning on taking his secrets to the grave.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>At least death wants to take him quickly this time. He falls quickly, no long, drawn out tragedy as he can only just recall the faintest memories of.</p><p>He watches Jack, unconscious from the ground, having been forgotten there by Tracer as she chased Kace, and McCree, as the man rushed forward to Gabriel’s side, after all these years.</p><p>He reaches to the other man, and finds himself unable to have him, just as he’d always been. A shadow reaching towards the sun, vanishing the closer it got.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A shadow stoops in front of him, as Ana quickly moves to administer aid to him. “I may have failed to protect you before,” She said firmly. “But I will not bury you again, Gabriel. Not when you have so many questions to answer.”</p><p>He feels her lift off his mask, and red eyes meet brown.</p><p>He cannot speak, and his eyes search hers for a long moment, before she’s pressing her healing material into the wound, and Gabriel allows himself to close his eyes and release, wondering if it was going to be enough, knowing his body was bound to be hard to care for. If Moira’s allowed to help, that’s one thing but…if she isn't…</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s different than Zurich, when he had died alone and forgotten, this time he is surrounded by those people he’d been trying to protect, and wonders, briefly, if this time, he’d done enough.</p><p>Blue eyes meet red as Ana moves and moves him, and Gabriel looks intently at Jack, just as Jack comes back to, and he lays his head down on the ground, finally giving up the ghost and closing his eyes, certain that Jack was surrounded by those who would take care of him.</p><p>He’s known this was his path for years. That was why he’d made that video.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He and Ana had drunk themselves far enough into the bottle that they’d started slow dancing to Gabriel’s vintage records, and that’s of course when Jack decides to deign his best friends with his presence. </em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Jack!” Gabriel says cheerily as he and Ana disentangle limbs, the woman laughing, with a couple quiet curses, seeming to realize how tossed they both were. He gives the other man his typical grin, made earnest by the booze. “Was wondering when you were going to show.”</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“If, more like.” Ana hums. “Our strike commander has lately taken to running himself into the ground.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I wouldn’t miss the divorce party.” Jack says, sheepishly as he lets himself in, placing the cake he’d brought with on one of Gabriel’s tables. “Clearly you two have been partying for a bit, though.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Never too late to start, Jackie,” He says as he takes the other man’s hand, squeezes it tight in his own, trying to memorize how it felt.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p><em>The three of them don’t party too much, not really, they spend most of the time talking, Ana throwing out the suggestion that they could go to Hawaii together after Gabriel mentions his ex-wife hated beach vacations and that’d meant his anniversaries had been stuffy events at wine sellers in Napa or <strong>worse</strong></em>.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Might have a hard time getting time off for all three of us.” Jack dampens the mood, sitting between the two, completely sober. “The UN will want our heads on pikes.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hey, c’mon, we could totally leave Reinhardt in charge,” Gabriel said teasingly, and the other two scoff. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Let’s not be hasty,” Ana loftily notes, leaning back. “But Jack, I do think Sam is right about one thing. What is it we’re going to do, when the fighting is over?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel thinks on that, a long flat empty stretch of endless road ahead of him. There was no end, he admits to himself, except a quiet service and a six-foot drop. </em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“We’re not even close to the end of the fight,” Jack answers for him, giving Ana a boyish grin that he knows better than the face in the mirror. “Besides I’m the youngest here; I have several more years to worry about that.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel stares at Jack, and wants to tell him. He wants to tell him everything. Wants to bring out his own case file, and discuss treatment. Make a plan. He knows that the figure he’s planning on bringing on is controversial but no one else is studying genetic enhancement anymore. At least, not in the way the SEP was done.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He wants Jack to know how frighteningly right he is. How frightened <strong>he</strong> is. How alone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They’ll get through it together; he’d made that promise to Jack, but…would Jack be willing to get through it with him?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re certainly greying as fast as Gabriel is,” Ana points out, and it’s teasing, but it keeps him silent, “It must be from all that worrying you do. Always on his heels.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“There’s a lot going on in the world right now, Ana.” Jack admits, sheepish, seeming to be thinking of all the responsibilities of Overwatch, blue eyes distant like the sea she was dreaming of. “There’ll be time for Kauai later, Ana, I’ll make sure it happens."</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“There’s always a lot going on in the world.” Gabriel leaned into him, sighing. “Our work is never finished. Plenty of shit still going on in the world. Talon seems content to never let me retire.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Gérard’s working on it.” Jack shoves him back, playfully. “Keep an eye out, Gabe, he’s got quite the resume compared to McCree. He’d be a shoe in.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Nah,” He shakes his head, wrestling with Jack as Ana sighs. “His wife’s too famous, and he wouldn’t care for the hours. I hear the benefits aren’t anything to write home about either.”</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>It’s a long night. They wind up cleaning up together, Ana asleep on the couch. Gabriel’s metabolism means he got drunk fast but it left his system quicker too. “I think she’ll be alright.” He tells Jack, and the other man nods, wiping dishes. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She’s Ana Amari,” Jack states as though that answers everything, as Gabriel cleans up bottles and garbage left on the floor. “Sam is the one missing out here.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He scoffs, rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, missing out on a great party with two burly commanders who treat his ex-wife like their sister, especially after he broke her heart.” Gabriel says back, grin emboldened by Jack’s tone, and the other man throws that boyish grin at him, along with a sponge from Gabe’s sink.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I could still call Rein, Mina and Torby up.” Jack playfully threatens. </em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Ugh, no,” Gabriel groans. “Small doses, Jack. Please let me be sober at least. Torb still feels bad about having put his foot in his mouth about me and Martha, and he actually likes Ana. We agreed, divorced singles only.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jack tilts his head at him, “And I was invited because…?”</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“I guess we just like you that much,” Gabriel informs him, playing at haughtiness, before it relaxes. He slumps down on his kitchen floor, again turning the thoughts over in his mind.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re scheming.” Jack says with a cocked eyebrow, looking down and reaching, Gabriel handing the sponge back without being asked. “Penny for your thoughts?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You pay me more for them on the clock,” He fires back, and Jack shakes his head, giving an exasperated chuckle. He allows familiar silence to fall, before he collects his thoughts enough to give words to them. “I guess it just hits differently when you see it happen to someone else. Martha and I had been on the rocks for years.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He gestures with his hands. “It only took one final fight, and that was that. But it was a fight; we went down swinging. Sam and Ana? They were solid. They married and had Fareeha knowing that Ana’s career would come first, always. At least with Patsy and I, Victoria was a happy accident in a wartime world, and the expectation was I was gonna come home.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jack is now watching him, expression careful, as though weighing up how to respond. He turns off the water, and settles next to Gabriel on the floor, the two sitting in silence in Gabe’s apartment.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I worry,” He says, as Jack takes his hand into his own, holds it. “That, if I viewed them as solid, right…what about others? Could it happen to you and me, too?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It won’t happen to us, Gabe.” Jack says instantly. Reflexively, even. “I know I wouldn’t let it, and I know you feel the same.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s funny, that. He squeezes back, mentally apologizing to him for never being able to speak, about what he wanted, what he needed. But it’s alright; because he knows Jack feels the same.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘I love you,’ isn’t spoken with them, it’s shown, in every late night meeting, in every conversation, in how Gabriel knows Jack has his back, and he has Jack’s. No matter what happens. He loves Jack Morrison. Jack Morrison loves him. This was what they had. And nothing more, because it couldn’t be. There’s no future for them, not here, not with who they were.   Everything they had, it was here. They’d built it together, brick by brick, moment by moment. They didn’t have a family, they had Overwatch.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>And it had been enough, right?</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>one more!  it's already more than halfway written, but if i'd posted it altogether it'd have been a 13000 chapter or somethin like that.  I'm hoping to finish it by this weekend.</p><p>lemme know what you thought!  comments are deeply appreciated ;w; im sorry if i havent responded i like to keep them on my ao3 front page to look at</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>What was left behind to figure out what happened?  Ana and Gabriel search for solutions, and Jack has to deal with the fallout of his actions.  </p><p>Even if they do, can they rebuild what they destroyed?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They put Jack under constant supervision after they return back to base, removing all his weapons from his person, and had locked him in his quarters. It’s driving him a little stir crazy, but he understands it.</p><p>No one will tell him what’s happening. Ana hadn’t spoken to him since they’d returned, instead helping Angela and Baptiste in surgery as O’Deorain’s minder.</p><p>It stings, more than a little. He was the one who saw the light leave Gabriel’s eyes twice now. He paces his room again, and McCree sighs. “Morrison,” He drawls. “Sit your ass down. No good in driving me up a wall too.”</p><p>“I need to see him.” Jack snips, and Jesse rolls his shoulders, tilting his head from side to side.</p><p>“Reckon you don’t.” He says calmly. “Seeing as <em>seeing</em> him drives you a little…” He whistled, making the cuckoo sound from a clock, twirling a finger beside his ear. “They’ll come tell us when they have news. The bitch said she’d be able to bring him back. So s’ only a matter of time.”</p><p>Jack makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Jesse leans back on his prosthetic, sighing again.</p><p>“Do you remember when it happened?” Echo asks, concerned, and Jack scowls. He knows what she’s referring to, in theory, but he doesn’t like it being addressed.</p><p>“No,” He deadpans. “I can’t recall being brainwashed.”</p><p>“Ana mentioned nightmares.” Echo suggests, trying to be helpful, the embodiment of Mina, trying to help in the only way she knew how.</p><p>“I can’t remember <em>those</em> either.” He bites out, sitting on the couch. He’s jittery, adrenaline coursing through him against his wishes. He’s been cooped up for hours, Jesse and Echo his guards. Genji, too, but he was on a bathroom break.</p><p>He’d woken up from being drugged, and a foul sharp dagger went through his chest when he’d seen Gabriel on the ground, reaching towards him, but the moment the drug was out of his system, he’d been hyped up, attempting to end himself. Reinhardt, McCree, and Echo all had to hold him apart, tear his hands away from his face as he sought to destroy himself, destroy Gabriel.</p><p>He didn’t even have answers as to why he was doing it. It was an instinct he couldn’t control. The sedatives Angela had fed him before surgery had long since worn off.   But he’d been separated from Gabriel, and knowing the man was alive made him angry at the other again.</p><p><em>He saved your life</em>, He attempts to reason with himself, the same way Echo, and McCree, and Genji all had, but it isn’t enough. This is beyond rationality, beyond his control.</p><p>Someone else was in his head, and that only feeds into the anxiety he’s feeling now.</p><p>Genji comes back into the room, languid. “They say he’ll live,” He announces, and McCree visibly relaxes, letting go of some old trauma and worry. Jack feels anger jump in his throat that he can barely control.</p><p>They need to go down with their ship. They need to, it must be done, and by his hand.</p><p>His hands shake, but Genji approaches him sadly, hands him pills, and Jack swallows them.</p><p>There’s some part of him, strangled beneath the anger, that hopes Gabriel will make it through whole.</p><p>XXXXX</p><p>Gabriel doesn’t typically sleep, because his dreams are terrifying and cold, and he wakes up in such bone deep agony that he’d rather be dead and he screams until he readjusts.</p><p>And yet, he does not scream. The agony is not at its fever pitch. He cracks open his eyes, and sits up, slowly, tries to move his hands and finds that they’re attached to a handcuff, which is then attached to a hospital bed.</p><p>The surroundings are familiar; Watchpoint: Gibraltar. He wasn’t here often, but he knew the base like he knew any other base.</p><p>It’s strange to wake up here, chained to a bed, but a relieved noise at his side alerts him that there’s more to this story.</p><p>Both Ana Amari and Moira O’Deorain are sitting next to him, seeming relieved to see him move. Moira is wearing a chunky collar and a set of handcuffs, but seems glad to see him awake.</p><p>“Moira?” He says, mouth dry. “Why are we in Gibraltar?”</p><p>She frowns, leans back. Shifts before Ana speaks for her.</p><p>“We’d cornered you in the streets of London.” She informs, dryly. “Your omnic help had turned on you, and we were taking advantage of that fact. We have you surrounded, your team is surrendering, and then Jack reveals he was a secret plant, placed to kill <em>you</em>, and he reveals this by attempting to kill me, which you stopped him from doing. Then, it’s revealed through Kace, a Null Sector leader in King’s Row, that you’d joined Talon as a triple agent. He goes to shoot Jack, you take the shot, and 6 hours of surgery later and another few days of rest, here we are.”</p><p>Moira looks from him, to Ana, and then back to him, nodding in agreement. “That is…more or less the order of operations.” She says, shifting again in her handcuffs. “You’re not screaming.”</p><p>“I know,” He says, coughing as he struggles to sit up. “Was going to ask you about it.”</p><p>“That would be the pain meds.” Dr. Ziegler walks in the room, making Moira sigh. “I take it they are doing their job?”</p><p>He gives Angela a confused look, and Moira nods sympathetically, before answering for him. “It seems so, but, well. I think this is the first time he’s at a managed level of pain in years. When I brought him back the first time, I wasn’t even able to move him out of Zurich for a month. He screamed himself far past hoarse.”</p><p>“Is that so,” Angela seems unimpressed, and Gabriel manages to fully prop himself up.</p><p>“S’ Jack okay?’ He asks, rubbing his temple, the question a softer one than he’d want to ask normally.</p><p>Angela gives Moira a side eye, before she bites her lower lip, obviously thinking on how to answer that one.</p><p>“He’s alive,” Moira explains for her. “His mental condition leaves much to be desired.”</p><p>“I don’t think we need input on that from you,” She points out, and Moira shrugs.</p><p>“It’s the truth. He’s a sleeper agent.” She folds her arms over her chest. “And he’s never been deactivated. My knowledge in biochemistry outside how it relates to my field is, granted, bit rusty, but the cortisol response alone is likely well past traumatic.”</p><p>“And what’s your excuse, exactly?” Angela snips back, and Moira sighs, rubbing her temples.</p><p>Ana interrupts the other two, lofty. “Now isn’t the time.” She looks to them both like the shrike she had named herself after. “Gabriel is alive, and awake. From their attitude, I expect at least, they are both willing to talk.” She gestures to him, addressing Moira expectantly. “So how do we fix Jack?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Soo,” Sombra says, calmly, being watched like a hawk by Zaryanova. “Essentially, someone turned him on back on the day of the Zurich explosion, and never turned him off. That’s mostly because he was supposed to die there.” She shrugs, calm.</p><p>“That’s what we’ve gathered.” Angela frowns, arms crossed. “But how do we turn this off?”</p><p>“Well, we simply have to give him his command phrase,” She gestures to Gabriel. “Then we see how he reacts to his target, and go from there.”</p><p>“And you know what his command phrase is?” Baptiste asks, seeming skeptical.</p><p>“If I did, don’t you think I’d already have given it to you?” She points out, shaking her head.</p><p>The silence that follows is deafening, and Reyes, in the device preventing him from using his powers attached to his spinal implants as well as handcuffs, sighs under his breath. <em>‘Do you know it Moira?’ </em>He asks her, using their mental connection instead of saying it aloud.</p><p>“Or at the very least, I would have used it back in London. I imagine when it hits him, it’s going to hit him like a sack of bricks.” Sombra continues when no one reacts to her line. “C’mon, give me some credit here. I’ve been nothing but cooperative. Hell, I’ve told you everything I know about this.”</p><p><em>‘I don’t,’ </em>She denies, blue and red eyes flickering to him. <em>‘…Though, it might be somewhere in any of the file dumps we took from the other leaders about Talon’s plans.’</em></p><p>“Sombra,” Baptiste sighs, shaking his head. “Now’s not the time to be upset about not necessarily being trusted. How do we get Morrison’s command phrase?”</p><p>“It will very likely be somewhere in Talon’s databases.” Reaper speaks up, voice a low rumble, “Given that Ogundimu did not doubt my loyalty to Talon until being given a reason, I can narrow it down to a few ex-members of the council.”</p><p>“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Sombra cheerfully states. “I have combed all of those people’s data up and down.” She turns to Ana, certain. “I believe I have narrowed it down to one potential person who had motive, means, and due cause to mistrust Reyes’ intentions in Talon.”</p><p>She leans forward, as though telling a secret. “I think the answer isn’t in Talon at all. I think that this, like a lot of what happened in the end, was beyond Talon. I think that I can find the answer in Director Petras’ old records. I’d simply need to access Athena’s records to test that theory.”</p><p>There is stunned silence, because it isn’t what Gabriel was expecting in the slightest.</p><p>“Director Petras?” Ana confirms, and Sombra nods.</p><p>“Think,” She taps her head. “Isn’t it interesting, that around the same time Overwatch was placed under his guardianship, under his authority, that’s when everything started to fall apart?” Sombra gestures to Reyes. “He was still fighting Talon, Overwatch was starting to make headway in recovering its image. Imprisoning Doomfist? That was huge. Yet more and more complaints came your way, more leaks kept happening.” She gives a long pause for dramatic effect. “Almost like there was someone sabotaging it all from the inside. And since I know it wasn’t Gabriel… it had to be someone else. Someone who could get close enough to Jack, and hide him for long enough to brainwash him.”</p><p>Gabriel’s convinced, but he knows that it might not sway others in the room.</p><p>“Winston is never going to let you touch Athena.” Zaryanova points out, sounding almost disappointed in her for suggesting that.</p><p>“While you make good points,” Angela says, nervous, “It’s hard to want to trust you with Athena without proof.”</p><p>“Don’t you have that omnic hacker friend of yours on staff?” Sombra points out, unimpressed. “Couldn’t they go into records in my stead? And if I’m wrong, that means we clear one suspect from the list and we can keep looking instead of wondering.”</p><p>“It’s true,” Ana hums, thinking hard on that. “We only have so many suspects who had easy access to Jack. Director Petras always seemed to have his ear. And if he was gone for a few days, on business with Petras, no one would have bat an eye…we could easily have Lynx 17 look, if only to clear him as a suspect.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Winston surprisingly isn’t thrilled about going snooping into the former Director’s files, but between Lynx 17’s curiosity, Ana’s reassurances that if there’s nothing, that’ll be it and they can move on, and both Ziegler and Zaryanova promising that they’d be on hand to survey the search, that they’re allowed to get started.</p><p>Sombra is allowed out of her handcuffs, and the woman does a hugely dramatic stretch of her limbs. “Alright,” She cracks her knuckles, sitting down leisurely at Winston’s console. “Let's get started.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They spend hours pouring over data, information, files locked away. Sombra is able to get through many of the old hoops, and at the same time, it does look to be exposing old weaknesses in the system.</p><p>Moira and Reyes are able to at the very least have their handcuffs removed, and are allowed to read through files with the others on hand, with the express understanding that if they misbehave, they’re going directly into a cell. With the vast majority of their powers locked away, there wasn’t much they could do, and aside from that, without access to his powers, Reyes was quickly deteriorating.</p><p>“If we don’t find this evidence that it wasn’t us,” Moira whispers to him quietly. “I imagine they’ll have even less reason to trust us.”</p><p>“I know that,” Gabriel coughs, wiping away the gross results of his condition, reading through yet another account. “Ana’s the only one in here really helping. Lynx 17 and Zaryanova are security details, and Winston is patching things up behind Sombra.”</p><p>“Your condition is worsening rapidly,” Moira frowns, taking a second to wipe his brow, and pulling away with sweat and his smoke solidifying. “Without your advanced healing to counteract your natural decay…”</p><p>“So we find this quickly,” He coughs again, and Ana leans towards them, mistrust clear in her expression.</p><p>“And then what?” Moira whispers, fervently. “Gabriel,”</p><p>“What are you two whispering about?” Ana says, coolly, and Gabriel clears his throat, struggling with it for a second.</p><p>Sombra groans. “Ugh,” She rolls her eyes as she walks over, gesturing to Gabriel and Moira. “He’s dying,” She reminds her, clearly. “He’s been dying for years, but Moira has intervened to save him. This resulted in his reaper powers slowly changing, becoming more pronounced as they’re both what’s killing him and what is keeping him alive. If control of his powers is locked away from him, then…?”</p><p>Ana pauses, the gravity of it hitting her. “I see.” She puts her hand over her mouth, considering it.</p><p>“And it’s foolish for us to simply ask for you to remove the device preventing him from using said powers, or for me to ask Angela to <em>please</em>, let me use her laboratory space to create one of his treatments,” Moira sarcastically remarks, returning back to her aloof expression, quickly reading through documents that Sombra had transferred to her. “So the quicker we find this supposed command phrase, the better.”</p><p>The woman reads a few more lines, before her expression sours, grousing. “Winston, Sombra, Lynx 17.” She announces. “File name, 762069Beta. There’s many files within it, but seeing as they’re under Director Petras’ unique ID, and one of the first documents discusses Talon’s seeming inability to crush Overwatch…perhaps they needed a push in the right direction.” She keeps reading, as the others in the room quickly find the files that the woman had noticed.</p><p>“This would mean that Petras isn’t Talon, though?” Winston notes, and Sombra nods, excited.</p><p>“I never said he was.” She pulls up her chart, gesturing to the middle excitedly. “There <em>were</em> too many coincidences that final year. Someone was orchestrating it all. I knew it wasn’t going to be the Italian’s doing. Talon is full of too many bumbling fools, even at the top.” She points at the middle. “There is someone, or some<em>thing,</em> that really runs this world. And I have never been closer to finding it.”</p><p>Moira and Gabriel sigh, having heard her theory before. “That would be convenient.” Gabe dryly notes. “But I’ve told you before that's incredibly unlikely. Your theory covers way too many spare pieces, and having that many loose ends would make it an incredibly hard secret to keep. Like any conspiracy, the more people who know about it, the less likely it’s going to stay secret. Like how Moira being a member of Talon was essentially an open secret. That’s part of why my cover was good inside of Talon.”</p><p>“But it sucked <em>outside</em> of Talon.” Sombra reminds him. “Someone could still see that you were way too close to Morrison for it to be entirely true.”</p><p>“Is it even likely that Director Petras even wrote it down, then?” Lynx 17 interrupts, the omnic’s voice doubtful. “If what you’re saying is true, that the more evidence is left behind, the more likely it is to be discovered, then why would he have ever written it down? Especially if it was meant to die with Morrison and Reyes.”</p><p>The thought is…discomforting.</p><p>“Let us hope you are wrong,” Zaryanova said firmly. “For Morrison’s sake.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gabriel and the rest of them read many of the files found in Petras’ directory, but it is as Lynx 17 and Gabriel had worried.</p><p>Not a trace of the how’s. Only a discussion of why, the plan as it was intended. It was written for someone else, but apart from that, it was incredibly clean.</p><p>By the end of the afternoon, the grim reality had set in. Moira places a hand on his shoulder. “Gabriel.” She murmurs. “We need to bring you back into the medical bay. You cannot last like this.”</p><p>Sombra, in spite of how much she had learned, looks to him in concern as well. “We can continue searching here. You’re looking, a little…”</p><p>“Bad?” He dryly guesses, watching as darkly smoking lesions appear on his skin. “… I don’t know how much more luck we’ll have here.”</p><p>“We’ve found a lot about Petras, and we’ve confirmed the idea it was him,” Lynx 17 dropped their head. “Unfortunately, it seems like that’s all we’re going to find.”</p><p>He sighs, the sound a deep rattling noise in his chest. “Ana,” He looks at the woman, firm. “Mind if we stop by Jack’s office first? I just…I think we need to discuss some things. Hard truths.”</p><p>“Do you want me there, Gabriel?” Moira asks, and he shakes his head. “…I’ll meet you back in medical.” She murmurs, picking up his grim thoughts, and allowing Winston to lead her out of the office.</p><p>“Do you need help walking?” Ana offers, and he again shakes his head. He got into this mess on his own two feet, and he’s going to walk the remainder of the way down his highway, even though he knew exactly what was at the end.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jack’s office is untouched from the last day they were here, perhaps not even two days prior to the final explosion. His notes remain stickered around the room, hanging on every surface.</p><p>He sits on the dusty old couch, and grimaces.</p><p>“…You don’t think we’re going to find answers, do you?” Ana asks, and Gabriel slowly shakes his head.</p><p>“I don’t.” He murmurs, quiet, keeping his death rattle as quiet as he could. “There were likely only two people in on it who are still alive. Jack, and Petras. Everyone else is…likely dead. He wouldn’t have wanted it getting out. And Petras, after everything we read…well, I doubt he will allow us to find out. I don’t know his plans…but I’m sure that he’d rather die than ruin them. Sombra’s right about one thing; this is a lot bigger than we ever suspected.”</p><p>Ana already is tearing up. It seems that she knows him well, even now, if she’s able to guess why he wanted to talk to her in private.</p><p>“And <em>you</em> need Jack, he’s always been…the one people need.” He wheezes. “Jack and I…we won’t ever be able to work together. But he’s able to work, if I’m not there. If I just…fade, into the background… then he’ll be able to keep going.   I’m dying, Ana. I’ve known that, for a long while.” He licks his lips. “I’ve already gotten more answers than I think I deserve, considering what I’ve done in the name of revenge.”</p><p>“Jack wouldn’t want that,” Ana refuses, expression shifting with her teary eyes. “Even if who he is now doesn’t realize that. Don’t make me bury you again, Gabriel.”</p><p>“If I don’t,” He rasps. “You might have to bury us <em>both</em> again. Overwatch will never let me leave. If I just…cease, to be a problem, then…” He lets out a shuddering breath. “You and Jack can finish the mission. Find Petras, and give whoever did this what they’re owed.” He laughs, lowly. “My revenge too, if you can find the time.”</p><p>“Jack’s been trying to give everyone hell.” Ana laughs, wiping her eyes. “I like to think it’s him unconsciously emulating you. Trying his best to live up to you, like always.”</p><p>“What would he do?” Gabriel asks, sitting in his old best friend’s couch, reimagining the old days.</p><p>Ana pauses, looks to the news written about on the notes. “He kept searching for me long after everyone else believed I was dead. I have little doubt in my mind he would attempt to simply <em>will</em> you out of being brainwashed.” She looks to him again. “He wouldn’t give up,” She finishes.</p><p>“It’s not giving up,” He denies. “It’s just…being pragmatic. I died that day, Ana. Moira has prolonged my life…many years. My presence is his trigger. He’s supposed to kill me, and kill himself. If I’m removed from the situation…he’s normal again.”</p><p>Ana pauses, thinking on that. “Not quite normal. But he’s still trying to give people hell for you,” She picks off one note from Jack’s computer. “Like he’s trying to live up to you.”</p><p>“Ana, you already said that.” He says, confused, as Ana begins reading notes, and picking certain ones off the surfaces of the room. “What are you doing?”</p><p>She holds up a note, triumphant. “Not giving up.” She reads it for him. “It’s best to pull weeds on a father’s farm in the winter,” Amber eyes almost glow in pride. “What a strange phrase to have written in so many places on tiny notes scattered around a room,” She hands him one, and he recognizes Jack’s own handwriting. “You mentioned that the secret was likely last between Jack and Petras.”</p><p>He stares at it, breath harsh in his throat, his shock making it harder to breathe. “And Jack could have just been trying his best to make sure someone else would figure it out, the last way he could.” He shudders, and Ana puts a hand on his shoulder.</p><p>“Let’s get you back to the medical bay,” She murmurs, and leads him out of there. “I think I may have solved this yet. So let me protect you <em>both</em> this time, Gabriel.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“So you think that this is going to work?” Jack asks her the next day, having heard this filtered through a grape vine.   He is frankly skeptical, but that Ana is this insistent about the matter, he’s willing to give it a shot.</p><p>“I don’t know.” She says, simply. “But if it does, well.” Ana gestures to the door. “You’d be able to rejoin us out there.”</p><p>“I certainly don’t remember writing a weird phrase on a note and sticking them all around my office.” He dryly comments, and Angela sighs, sitting nervously on the couch by the door.</p><p>“Are we going to try this?” She asks, looking at them both in concern. “I don’t particularly enjoy leaving O’Deorain and Reyes to their devices in my medical bay.”</p><p>He and Ana make eye contact, and he gives her the permission she was seeking; nothing ventured, nothing gained.</p><p>He hears the words, at first, but it’s like he’s being slowly dropped into water, his shoulders relax, and his eyes loose focus of Ana and Angela in front of him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Instead, he’s back in a familiar chair, in a too dark room, with a too bright light in his face. He cannot move. He cannot think.  He is bound and held captive. </em>
</p><p>
  
  <em>He’s been here before, and some part of him will always be here. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel and him sit in his office in Zurich, having finished yet another fight, very close to the end and yet, never realizing how close it was, living in these moments like the rest of their lives were still ahead of them. Brown eyes stare out his window, into the grey snow skies. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They’ve both said and done things they can’t take back. But this crossed a line, and Jack hates knowing that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A paper is held tight in Jack’s hand, and Gabriel’s jaw is clenched tight. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I think you should go, we’ve said everything that needs to be stated,” He tells Gabriel, detached. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>"</em>
  <em>If that’s how you feel,” Gabriel’s voice betrays the well of hurt beneath the surface.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It isn’t. It wasn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He wants so badly for Gabriel to lean back in, attempt to kiss him again like they were younger men, drunk on each other and in love, but never quite able to find the words. Stolen kisses in back rooms and reassuring touches in fleeting moments that were always being stolen away from them by responsibilities.</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m afraid that this is how it has to be, Gabriel.”   His voice is kept professional from a million miles away.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Just take his hand, he begs Gabriel, mentally straining against the vice grip on his body. Hold it like you always do.   He cannot tell you, but he’s trying so hard to show you. Trying so hard to warn you. They are running out of time and they don’t even know it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He instead sits there at his desk, unable to reach out to the other man. </em>
</p><p><em>Gabriel’s jaw works, and he releases a shuddering breath. “Alright, Morrison.” He says, quietly. He won’t take Jack’s hand into his own, won't hold out his hand to be held, and </em>Jack is crying<em>, because please, Gabriel, open Jack’s hand, see what he’d left for you.</em></p><p>
  <em>But Gabriel had offered him his hand a million times before this. Had been there for him, had spent time and energy being there. That Gabriel is just as worn down by this as Jack isn’t a sin. Jack isn’t angry.</em>
  
</p><p><em>But Petras makes him <strong>furious</strong></em>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He is crying, screaming at himself to stop, stop.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Watches himself destroy every part of Gabriel, even as Gabriel tried so hard to just get him away from this object of their destruction.</em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel is crying too, blood and black smoke, bleeding out from the gunshot Jack had given him. He begs Jack to stop. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s a one sided match, Gabriel trying his best to avoid his blows, and Jack cutting through them with an uppercut through his defenses, or a smooth kick, it was like a hot knife to butter.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jack cannot stop himself. Gabriel forces him to, and the feeling of claws hitting skin, of Gabriel desperately taking the gun, and then there is silence. He’s only half awake, watching Gabriel fade back to earth. The reaper mask forms, and then slides off Gabriel’s face, unable to be held up without… and it had to be painful, if he could even still feel it, touching exposed bone and muscle like that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He did that to you, Gabriel. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He wouldn’t even hold your hand in the end.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gabriel’s lips-what remain of them- are slow, a clear motion. There’s no fear in his eyes.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you, Jack.” Gabriel says with his final words, the warmth in his eyes, with his actions, placing the Reaper mask on Jack, giving him that precious oxygen filter that would prevent him from suffocating in the fire. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But that he said them, when they’d rarely ever said anything, due to the world always finding a reason to keep them apart.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He can remember now, the base rumbling, the final moments before the explosion, as Gabriel’s expression goes grim. He kicks Jack back, and Jack realizes, every time he saw Gabriel run, he was running to the exit, trying to lead Jack out, and his final gift was to give him a head start, like catching a wave in the surf. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He knew he wouldn’t survive, but he had wanted Jack to. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Because he loved Jack, in that same complete way that Jack had always loved him. Even if it was hard, even if it was never spoken. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But it was, at the end, and that final act of love Gabriel had given him, the exposing of his mask; using the object of their division to shield Jack from the worst of the downfall that one, last, time.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Jack comes too, and he’s screaming. The sound is hoarse, breaking. Ana and Angela are holding him down, Jesse and Sojourn having come back in to help keep him planted to the floor.</p><p>He can feel the tears in his eyes catching, blinding him. “I killed him,” He gasps, trying to catch his breath, shuddering and shaking, as the emotional release of it all was the equivalent of a rubber band ball getting that last, fatal addition. “Ana, oh god, I <em>killed </em>him. And I blamed him for it.”</p><p>“It wasn’t you, Morrison,” McCree says roughly, his brown eyes sharp, slowly releasing his hold on Morrison at Angela’s direction, the man’s breathing coming back to a slower, steadier pace.</p><p>“It <em>was</em> me.” He shakes. “I tried to tell him, to <em>warn</em> him it was coming, but, I,” His words catch on his own breath, and he resists the urge to shout. “I wasn’t able to, I couldn’t. I failed him, not the other way around.” His fists clench and unclench, and he runs a hand down his face, holding it over his mouth, in growing horror and dread.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He remembers that day in pieces. Remembers luring Gabriel to his office, and then beating him to <em>death. </em>In spite of the horrific way Gabriel had been treated, he’d still tried to save Jack, had still <em>been</em> trying to save Jack.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He can see how Gabriel could have just sunk into Reaper. His own teammates blamed him for what happened at Zurich. They’d always blamed him for Overwatch’s downfall, in words, actions and tone.</p><p>
  <em>“It’s time to admit you cannot fix this,” Was one of the last things he’d been forced to say to Gabriel. “That you are incapable of fixing this, and leave it to people that can.”</em>
</p><p>He can remember the look on Gabriel’s face, like he’d been slapped. Remembers telling him to leave, tone suggesting that maybe he meant that Gabriel should leave Overwatch altogether.</p><p>To Gabriel, Overwatch had become the symbol of that which was destroying the world. It’d killed Ana long after it’d ruined her relationship with Gabriel.</p><p>It’s in hindsight that he can see the isolation of Gabriel from the rest. And Jack, the only person who hadn’t given up on him, had been pried from his mind and forced to take those final steps to shove Gabriel off the edge. To kill Gabriel, and kill himself, and leave Gabriel with nothing except Talon, to position Overwatch as his torturer.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The noise that comes out of his throat barely sounds human, and Ana is there, hugging him, holding him, as the depth to which he’d been <em>violated</em> to hurt his closest and oldest friend only becomes more and more apparent.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s understandable; yet painful that he isn’t allowed into the medical bay where Gabriel is resting, being treated. Ana splits her time between the two of them, and Reinhardt and Torbjörn slowly begin to come around to Jack’s side.</p><p>He’s allowed out of the room he was initially kept in, after days worth of checking, testing his resilience, making sure he wasn’t going to slide back into that crazed state where he’d been willing to kill Ana, for god’s sake.</p><p>He’s horrified. He’s baffled. He’s nervous, anxious.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>But life moves on. Moira and Gabriel aren’t exactly <em>welcome</em>, but Sombra fits into the team much better than a lot of people had thought she would. Part of it was her relationship with Baptiste, and shockingly, McCree, and the other part of it was how, almost comically, she reflected the man she’d worked for. Some of Gabriel’s best (and worst) qualities were exemplified in the woman.</p><p>Sigma, or Dr. De Kuiper, as it comes to be known, is a much more concerning puzzle piece.   His connection to reality was…frail, admittedly. Apparently he was a famous astrophysicist who’d previously worked on the Horizon Lunar Colony, but after a final experiment done on the ISS more than a decade ago, he’d been declared dead.</p><p>The man had no answers for any of them, though, which only made his power over gravity all the more disturbing. Sombra takes care of him, though, and she slowly plies the team into at least allowing Moira to take care of Sigma as well, a privilege she is eventually granted. She has answers, but acknowledges that the team has very little reason to believe her, so she won’t waste her breath just yet.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The team relaxes, slowly.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gabriel remains in the medical bay, and the only answer he has about it is that the man is simply ‘recovering.’</p><p>McCree, Ana, and Moira spend a lot of time in there with him, and Angela does as well. Their faces are grim, a lot of the time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Reaper is no longer a threat, no longer out there in the night. Talon lost two very powerful weapons, as well as two of their top scientists, and a very integral tool in their upper echelons.</p><p>Instead, he remains in the medical bay, and people begin to talk about it. About them, about Jack as well.</p><p>People outside of those closest to him start to talk about it. It’s obvious that rumors had spread, and had been moving around unabated.</p><p>The main takeaway about Jack was that he was less intense, now.</p><p>Hana Song and her friend mechanic put it together best. “You know? I was originally excited to work with you,” She mentions. “Overwatch was full of my childhood heroes. Then I got here and everyone told us to keep some distance.”</p><p>Dae-hyun nods in agreement. “Lúcio told us in a few words. We were expecting to see Jack, but…you’re Soldier: 76, and there’s a difference in expectations there.”</p><p>Jack runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry if I ever said something to you that… tempered your experience with me,” He apologizes, in earnest. His relationship with the team is strangled for many reasons, but he’s determined to build back what he’d destroyed on his supposed final mission.</p><p>D.va shakes her head. “No, no…you were nice enough, at least. Just a little patronizing. I know I’m the youngest, but I’m also one of the only members here with military experience.”</p><p>“I thought it was just an older soldier trying to look out for Hana, which, honestly, she sometimes needs.” He smiles as he looks at her with worry, and Hana playfully shoves him, groaning.</p><p>“It’s gotten better!” She points out, put upon. Aleksandra has a lot of really good advice for me, and between her, Brigitte and Fareeha, I think I’m going to have quite the muscle to back me up when I’m not in my MEKA.” She preens.</p><p>Jack leans back in his seat, feeling at ease at least. He can understand compartmentalizing all that, not wanting to touch it. He was beginning to learn about himself again, Torbjörn and Reinhardt were beginning to see that his refusal to contact them wasn’t out of negative emotions towards them, but as a side effect of having been brainwashed.</p><p>The only real downside is that he’s not yet allowed on missions.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Weeks pass. Gabriel remains in the medical bay, and Jack is reintegrated into the team. People begin to really warm up to him. A lot of them mention noticing a difference. Ana especially tells him he’s a lot <em>warmer</em> now.</p><p>“More of the person you were before,” Ana teases. “Be careful, I think if you’re that soft on Lena again, she’s going to break down and hug you.”</p><p>“She already did,” Jack tells her, sheepish. “Said it was really good to have me back on the team. I’m not feeling like I’m back on the team.”</p><p>“You are,” She chides. “You’ve always been the heart of it. People love you.” She reminds him, a hand on his. “They always have.”</p><p>He lets her reassure him, but he cannot stop imagining Gabriel’s hand there instead. His reassuring hold was different than the others, his warm brown eyes were reassuring to Jack and Jack alone.</p><p>Gabriel had promised him, over and over and over that they’d get through it together.</p><p>Jack <em>is</em> through it, though. Maybe not in one piece, but his crisis is over.</p><p>And Gabriel remains in the medical bay.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>The thing about Jack Morrison, as he was, is that he never knew how to leave good enough alone. Still doesn’t.</p><p>Jack knows Ana and McCree are going on a mission soon. He’s not yet on the roster for the bigger ones, but he knows it’s a matter of time.</p><p>Moira and Angela, while they still bicker, are on at least good enough terms after the two months getting to know one another for real, understanding what Moira had done, had been forced to do to survive.</p><p>Because of this, he comes to learn that Gabriel is in fact left alone in the medical bay for hours at night when Ana and McCree are gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Perfect time for a visit, then.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The med bay reminds him a lot of Zurich, of the SEP, of early Overwatch. There’s only one person in it now, but the sounds of medical equipment working in the background disturb him.</p><p>He approaches, pulls back the curtains, and Gabriel’s eyes open, stare at him. There’s some surprise, in how his eyebrows twitch, maybe a bit of fear in his eyes, pupils constricting. But the man cannot speak at the moment, the devices in his mouth, down his throat preventing that. He cannot move, cannot run. Gabriel obviously knows this.</p><p>“Hey, Gabe.” Jack’s voice shudders as he speaks, sliding down into the chair that Ana and McCree had obviously left for this. “Been a while. Sorry, no one was real keen on…testing.” His hands shake, in early grief, and Gabriel’s eyes look him over, searching his face. His fingers twitch, and Jack is moving before Gabriel hits his restraints. He holds Gabriel’s hand.</p><p>Again, he just wants to break down. He did this.</p><p>Gabe’s face is burnt, scarred, barely recognizable as <em>Gabe. </em>It’s only years upon years of familiarity that lets him know this man is Gabriel.</p><p>“It worked,” He says, eyes warm and threatening him with tears. “Christ. I don’t even have…the words, yet.” His voice is choked up. “Other than I’m so sorry. Gabriel, I,” He has to stop, Gabriel’s hand squeezing his back. “You didn’t fail. <em>I </em>failed.” He corrects him, that video having haunted him for the past 6 years. “It’s my fault. You <em>were</em> enough, but I failed <em>you</em>.”</p><p>Brown eyes stare at him almost vacantly, but the grip on his hand is tight. Gabriel’s other hand works against his restraints, fails. He seems irritated, his hand unable to move the thing from his mouth.</p><p>“I think Angela might have words with me if I take you off the ventilator,” Jack says, voice wet, giving Gabe that boyish smile as he thought on it. “But...She’s already going to have words with me if she finds out I visited you unsupervised.”</p><p>Gabe’s expression flattens, unimpressed, shaking his head at his words, as though disbelieving that anyone would have expected otherwise of Jack Morrison.</p><p>He leans his head back, chest kept moving with machinery. Black sludge leaks off him, in a macabre reminder of the specter of the SEP that still hangs over him.</p><p>He lets them both sit there in the familiarity, before he has to do something. Gabriel is looking at him in a cross of disbelief and confusion as Jack undoes the handcuffs, breaking them with ease.</p><p>“They can take it up with me later,” He says, voice shaking. “You’re not…a villain. You weren’t until I literally shoved you over the edge and dragged your corpse over the touchdown line and beyond.”</p><p>Gabriel sits up, and the two of them work together, to take the ventilator out of Gabe’s mouth, the device familiar to them both, if unfortunately necessary now.</p><p>“Morrison,” Gabriel wheezes, “You’re so dumb. How are you able to know if I’m on your side or not.”</p><p>“I had a feeling,” He shakily replies, as Gabriel leans forward into him. He holds the man tight, in a hug. “I wanted to talk with you. Hard to do that if you’re unable to speak.”</p><p>Gabriel hugs him back, the motion weaker than it used to be, reminding Jack that he <em>killed Gabriel</em>. “Might not be able to for long,” He rasps, coughing. “S’ not looking good, Jack.” He admits, and Jack nods, pulling back, propping Gabriel up.</p><p>“How do I fix this?” He asks, getting straight to the point, and Gabriel waffles.</p><p>His oldest friend coughs, his eyebrows rose, and he leans back in the bed, grimacing. “Well, uhm,” He raises clawed hands, carefully scratches his neck. “I can’t use my powers,” He explains. “Moira is trying to make a workaround, but…it’s not really worked.” He shook his head. “Angela reminds everyone I’m Reaper when the possibility is brought up to remove the device in my neck.” He gestures.</p><p>“How long do they think you have?” Jack asks, and Gabriel’s burnt and scarred face turns away from him.</p><p>“Honestly? They don’t know. Angela reckoned I’d have died already…and I did, in Zurich. Moira dragged me out as a corpse. But medical intervention, well. It’s kept me going.” He coughs again, the sound rattling deep in his chest.</p><p>Jack stares at the device in Gabriel’s neck, attached at his spinal column. Gabriel eyes him up carefully. “Jack,” He says, as though to ward him off. The voice he used to use to warn him from doing something he might regret.</p><p> </p><p>He’s tired of regrets with Gabriel.</p><p>“I’m doing this,” He tells him firmly, hands moving to examine the device. “I’m the reason why you’re in this state. I’m not going to kill you a second time, Gabe. Once was…too much.”</p><p>“This is the SEP’s fault, Jack,” Gabriel reminds him, but leans forward in spite of his half-hearted attempt to rebuke him.</p><p>“That was stupid of us too,” He admits, readily, looking it over, touching it curiously. “As much as Angela complained about Moira, she should have been after all the people interested in using her work for this. US government and all.”</p><p>They’d jerry-rigged it up to his spinal implant, the shine of the metal new and ominous to Jack. “I think I have this,” He says, and Gabriel gives him a side eye, scarred lips screwing to the side.</p><p>“If I’m paralyzed after this and Moira has to redo that implant, I’m actually going to kill you,” He threatens, deadpanning.</p><p>“Angela would redo it,” He assures him, and Gabriel scoffs, practically rolling his eyes because that wasn’t the <em>issue</em>, Morrison.</p><p>“I think I…” He pauses, and pulls out the device in a smooth motion. “Got it!” Gabriel instantly wraiths, and then reforms to take several deep breathes, throat finally clearing.</p><p>His heart monitor is screeching, and Jack reaches over idly to turn off the unnecessary equipment. Red eyes meet blue, caught in headlights, and Jack gives a halfhearted smile.</p><p>Gabriel has a choice, now, stay or go. To rebuild, or not. To try again to fix things or accept failure that Jack had shouldered onto him 7 years ago. Jack can’t make it for him, as much as he wants to. But they’re beyond the Strike Commander and Commander of Blackwatch routine. This is something new.</p><p>Jack holds his hand out for Gabe this time.</p><p>“Sap,” Gabriel tells him, but accepts the olive branch, and puts his hand into Jack’s.</p><p>He squeezes, tightly, holding it with everything he’d never said, had failed to say, to tell him. But it’s a new beginning.   If they’re going to have <em>this</em>, this thing between them that had only existed in the space between their bodies and in back closets and longing gazes, he has to address where they ended, or where they had been planned to end.</p><p>“I love you too, Gabe,” He murmurs, and Gabriel makes his choice again, just as he had back then.</p><p>Gabriel surprises him, then, by pulling him tight to his chest, Jack grunting as the air is pushed out of his lungs from the force of it.</p><p>“God, fucking, damn <em>you</em>, Jack,” He says from the crook of Jack’s neck. “I thought I’d lost you for good.”</p><p>“I thought I told you back then. I’d never let that happen to us,” He reminds Gabriel, wiping his own tears away before he hugged Gabriel close. “They can be pissed off at me later. You’re alive, Gabe. We made it.”</p><p>Gabriel pulls away for just a moment, only to surprise him again with an impassioned kiss. “Don’t you <em>ever </em>make me do that again,” He threatens after breaking away, and Jack hums.</p><p>“I think you’d like it if I got you to kiss me again,” He teases, giving him another long kiss, ignoring Gabriel’s words about that not being what he was talking about.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>No more secrets between them, then. Their love had been enough, and they’d made it through it, together.</p><p>They’d make it through this next part together, too, no longer concerned with what others might thing. They had each other, and that <em>was</em> enough.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks so much for reading I hope you enjoyed it!  Sorry for the cheesy chapter summary, I'm very tired and ready to have this at a happy ending situation.  I love yalls comments so please do let me know what you think!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>